Sri Aurobindo(1945)

SRI AUROBINDO

Ai-so BY K. R. Srinivasa IvENdMi
Indo-Anglian Literdlure.

Literature and Authorship in India.

The Indian C'onlrihiilion to English
Literature.

Lytton Sirachey, a Critical Study,

On Beauty.

Musings of Basava (in collaboration).
Raja Lakhamagauda, a Memoir.

S. Srinivasa Iyengar : the Story of a
Decade of Indian Politics.

A Handbook of Indian Administration
(in collaboration).

Shakespearian Tragedy (in the press).
Gerard Manley Hopkins (in the press).

Edited by K. R. Sriniva.sa Iyengar
Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel.
Congreve’s The Way of the World.
Coleridge’s Christabed.

SRI AUROBINDO

BY

K. R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR

M.A., D.LITT.

Profesw of English
Bdioveshvar College, Bagalkfit
University of Bombay

CALCUTTA

ARYA PUBLISHING HOUSE

COLLEGE STREET

1945

Publisher : T. Patro
AR\ A PUBLISHING HOUSE
6.-), Collei'c Street, Calcutta

erz

f ) 31a s

First Fublished : ztsl February j()45

ALL RIGHTS' RESERVED

^DIO

GOVERNMENT CENTRAL PRESS
Hyderabad, Deccan
Phinteti in lNT>rA

PREFACE

In ihe following pages I have made a conscientious
attempt to present a composite portrait of Sri Auro-
bindo. The biographer oj Sri Aurobindo has to he
himself a poet and a prophet, a philosopher and a
Yogi ; and since I am none of these, the task I had
undertaken has gneatly exceeded my abilities. I
nevertheless hope that this study, being the first
attempt of its kind in English, will supply the need for
an easy and reliable introduction to Sri Aurohindo’s
life and works.

The first draft of this book was completed in
February 1942 ; it was taken up again, rewritten
and enlarged, and put into its present shape in Ocioher-
Novemher 1943. I have incorporated into the book
some paragraphs and stray sentences from three of my
other published papers, viz,, '‘The 'Personality' of
Sri Aurobindo ” (The Social Welfare, July 1943),
“ Sri Aurobindo as a Literary Artist ” (Sri Aurobindo
Mandir Second Annual, August 1943), and " The
Poetry of Sri Aurobindo ” (The New Review,
October 1943). For the rest, I have generally indicated
in the footnotes the extent of my indebtedness to others
in writing this book.

To many of my friends in Sri Aurobindo Asram
and outside, who have favoured me with much helpful
criticism and advice, I owe an immense load of grati-
tude ; but as they object, with a rare self-effacement, to

V

my nient/inning them here by name, I have reluctantly
to satisfy myself uhlh this collective ackmnuled^ement.
Lastly, I am very grateful to the Director of the
Government Central Press, Hyderabad {Deccan), and
the Manaf^^er of the Arya Publishing House, Calcutta,
for the extreme care and faultless taste uhlh which they
have carried out the printing and puhlicaiicm of this
book in even these very dijficuU days.

K. R. SRINIVARA IYENGAR.

Bagalhot,

22 nd January 19 * 15 -

VI

(CONTENTS

Page

Preface ..... v

INTRODUCTION

I. Renascent India and Sri Aurobindo . 5

Part I

HUMANIST AND POET

n. Childhood, Boyhood and Youth . . 19

in. Baroda 39

IV. Translations • • • • • SS

V. Narrative and Dramatic Poetry . . 72

VI. Miscellaneous Poetry . . . .91

Part II

PATRIOT AND PROPHET

Vn. The Plunge into Politics . . .117

VIII. Bandemataram ..... 132

IX. Surat and After . . . . .149

X. Asramvas at Alipur .... 172

XI, Karmayogin . . . . .192

Part III

PILGRIM OF ETERNITY

Xll. Pondicherry . . . . .217

XIII. Arya ...... 233

XIV. The Life Divine ..... 266

XV. Poet of Yoga ..... 314

XVI, The Yoga and the Asram . . .346

vii

EPILOGUE

Pa(’.e

XVIL A Honici'^e . . . . . • 30 i

Al’PENllIX

A Note on Thoiifiht the Pciracletc . . 403

RiBi^ionRAPiiY ...... 423

ILLUSTRATIONS

E . Sri Aurobindo Frontispicca

2. Sri Aurobindo in Ciilcutta. . . . 132

3. Sri Aurobindo in I’ondicherry . . . 233

4. The Asrain (one view) .... 346

5. The Asram (atwtlier vunvjroiii ilia street,) • 355

6. Darshan Sidelights ..... 370

viii

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

RENASCENT INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO

I

When, by the end of the eighteenth century, the
Britisher consolidated his power in India, the
country was to all appearance a spiritual ‘‘ waste
land.” The Western impact on the Orient had
completed the disintegration of the latter ; the old
order was seemingly dead, the new one was not —
could not be — as much as thought of ; only a terrible
stupor prevailed, paralyzing the secret springs of
the nation’s high creative endeavour.

For nearly three thousand years — or more —
India had been in the vanguard of human civiliza-
tion ; she had, almost continuously, thrown out with
exuberant nonchalance an amazing variety of litera-
tures, philosophies, schools of painting and archi-
tecture and dancing and music, sane and intricate
systems of government, fruitful traditions in medi-
cine and engineering, and the elaborate sciences of
grammar, mathematics, chemistry and astronomy.
Wave upon wave of invasion had passed over the
vast sub-continent that is India, but the stream of
Indian culture, deep and broad at once, had pursued
its majestic way, unaffected apparently by the

3

SRI AUROBlI^JJO

periodic formations of foam and ripples on the
irregular surface. How, then, was the miracle —
for miracle surely it was — of such abundant vitality
preserved over so enormous a stretch of time ?
How did such vitality manage ever to tame the
upsurging forces of disintegration into submission
01 to force out of even them new syntheses, new
harmonies, new achievements ? The answer stares
us in the face if we correctly read the story of the
rise and fulfilment of ancient Hindu civilization :

“ On the one side there is an insatiable curi-
osity, the desiie of life to know itself in every
detail, on the other a spirit of organization and
scrupulous order, the desire of the mind to tread
through life with a harmonized knowledge and in
the right rhythm and measure. Thus an ingrained
and dominant spirituality, an inexhaustible vital
creativeness and gust of life and, mediating bet-
ween them, a powerful, penetrating and scrupul-
ous intelligence combined of the rational, ethical,
and aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of
action, created the harmony of ancient Indian
culture."^

At long last, the vitality showed signs of certain
emasculation, the spiritual force behind it seemed
to retire further and further into the far interior, and
the intelligence seemed to be somewhat dazed by
the shock of new phenomena, and so™ with a fatal

r. Sn Aurobindo, The Renaissance’ tn India, p. i8.

4

KJiNASOi:.N i. INDIA AND SRI AURUBlNDO

rapidity— the disintegrating forces grew dominant
more and more, the blood-streams of culture ceased
to flow with zest (or flow at all), and Bharatavarsha
became anaemic and wasted and bleak and forlorn.
It looked as though the twin movements, Vaishnavite
and Saivite, for the revival of Hinduism had also lost
their great spiritual drive and oply a memory of god-
intoxicated singers like Kabir and Tulsi Das and
Chaitanya lay behind to keep the obscured embers
of Indian spirituality yet alive. “ Any other nation
under the same pressure would have long ago
perished soul and body. But certainly the outward
members were becoming gangrened ; the powers
of renovation seemed for a moment to be beaten by
the powers of stagnation, and stagnation is death.

And yet, — was it really possible ? How indeed
had a change so disastrous really come to pass ?
Having reached up to the peaks of divine endeavour
in the Vedic and Upanishadic ages, and in the ages
of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa, how had the curve
of Indian civilization been deflected from its ascend-
ing path, how had its progress been strained lower
and lower, even to touch the rugged levels and
forbidding sterility of the " waste land

Obviously, then, the change had been brought
about in different stages, — at any rate owing to the
operation of a number of adverse circumstances.
There was, firstly, the failure of the fount of vital

I. Sri Aurofaindo, The Renaissance in India, p. i8.

s

SRi AUROBINJUO

energy consequent on the studied " denial of the
ascetic,” his systematic refusal to look at the world
and its inillion-petalled munificence of colour and
sound and taste and smell. There was, secondly,
a failure of the fount of intellectual energy, '' a
slumber of the scientific and the critical mind as
well as the critical intuition”^; dialectical reasoning
now acquired an oppressive vogue and mere sectari-
anism assumed the garb of omniscience and sat on
the high judgement seat and doled out but thin and
fitful currents of intellectual energy to the ” hungry
sheep ” that looked up for guidance and spiritual
food. Above all, spirituality was no more an all-
embracing phenomenon, giving strength and signi-
ficance to every minor and major department of life
and conduct, but a thing — a force — ^whose existence
was admitted indeed as a matter of safe policy, but
whose influence was reduced to a bare minimum.
Thus, while spirituality remained a factor in the life
of the Hindu, it only remained in the dim back-
ground, burning '' no longer with the large and clear
flame of knowledge of former times, but in intense
jets and in a dispersed action which replaces the old
magnificent synthesis and in which certain spiritual
truths are emphasized to the neglect of others. This
diminution amounts to a certain failure of the great
endeavour which is the whole meaning of Indian
culture, a falling short in the progress towards the
perfect spiritualization of the mind and the life.”^

I & 2. Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, pp. 28, 29.

6

RJC.NASUi.l'l r INDIA AND aKI AUKUJ31NDO

These, then, were the causes of the decline and
fall — albeit a temporary one — of the Indian civiliza-
tion : the will to live was lacking, the intellect had
grown moribund, and spirituality would not assert
itself and revitalize the rest but was unaccountably
quiescent or was only half-heartedly active. The
impact of the West, and the subsequent national
confusions and disasters, quickened the process of
decay and disintegration, and the stream of Indian
culture was in very truth lost — as if for ever — amidst
the brambles or quicksands of the eighteenth
century. The wheel had come full circle ; the ebb
tide had done its very worst ; and the prospect was
gloomy and unutterably sad :

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.^

II

But evening and night are — they must be accord-
ing to the Indian law of cyclical recurrence — ever a
sure prelude, however unpleasant, to the dew-filled
and life-giving dawn of a bright and new future.
No wonder men could discover the dim streaks of
the new dawn even in the hour of India's darkest

I. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 11 . 395-398.

7

SKI AUKOBINJOO

extremity ; they would ask from time to time, at once
incredulous and full of hope :

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?t

The evil spell broke at last. It had been, after
all, a “ waste land ” only in appearance ; it had been,
on the other hand, rather the seed-time of renascent
India. Even the European impact was to prove
somewhat of a blessing in disguise, for it gave to
decadent Elinduism and to India generally "three
needed impulses, It revived the dormant intellec-
tual and critical impulse ; it rehabilitated life and
awakened the desire of new creation ; it put the
reviving Indian spirit face to face with novel condi-
tions and ideals and the urgent necessity of under-
standing, assimilating and conquering them."^
Naturally enough, new times threw up new men
to inspire and to lead. To a certain extent, sympa-
thetic and understanding Europeans like Sir William
Jones and Henry Golebrooke and Horace Hayman
Wilson had paved the way for a revival, but they
were foreigners after all, and a nation's salvation
has always to be worked for and achieved by her
own sons and daughters. That is why we have to
mark the real turning of the tide with the occurrence
of Raja Rammohan Roy on the Indian scene.
Rammohan was truly an Olympian figure and he

1, Milton, Comus, 11 . aai-a.

2, Sri Aurobindo, Tlje Renaissance in India, p. 31.

8

RjiNASCJlNl' INJDIA AND taRl AUKOBIKiJO

inaugurated “ a new revival in culture, in social
reform and in religious awakening .... He was
essentially a builder. He came to fulfil and not to
destroy.”^ He was ail for abolishing foolish and
baneful customs like sati, he was for getting back to
the original purity of Hinduism, he was an enthusi-
astic advocate of the “ new learning” through the
medium of English ; he was, in short, a man with his
eyes unfalteringly turned, not towards the Past, but
towards the Future. And yet, in Dr. Wingfield-
Stratford’s words, Rammohan ” was no mere Deist
or unbeliever, but a loyal Hindu, a Brahman of the
Brahmans, steeped in the lore of the Upanishads and
making his life’s work the restoration of the Hindu
faith to its pristine simplicity.”^

A Colossus though Rammohan was, he too had
his collaborators, and he was blessed in his successors
who, in their own several ways, carried on his noble
work of galvanizing the Hindu fold. We have had
accordingly, during the past one hundred years or so,
Titanic figures like a Dwarkanath Tagore, a Daya-
nand Saraswati, a Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a
Swami Vivekananda, a Mahadeo Govind Ranade, a
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a Bankim Chandra Chatterjee,
a Rabindranath Tagore. In their divers unique
ways, they have all given Indian culture a fresh lease
of life and they have all asserted the claims of the

1, Mahendranath Sircar, Easlern Lights, p. 183.

2. The History of British Civilization, p. 964.

9

RRI AUROiJlNJUO

Soul of India to live its untrammelled life, in the
spiritual no less than in the other different spheres
of human activity, From these great men — as from
others like Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo,
who are happily with us still — we have learned that,
if only we do not prove false to our heritage, we can
indeed rewrite our ancient glories in letters of gold.
As Sri Aurobindo remarked about ihirty-hve years
ago, *' ours is the eternal land, the eternal people,
the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness,
holiness may be overclouded but never, even for a
moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi, the
saint, are the natural fruits of our Indian soil ; and
there has been no age in which they have not been
born.”^

Ill

Among the Rishis of our own day, Sri Auro-
bindo's name must take a place at the top. His
personality looms so immense on spiritual India’s
horizon that he is rather like the great Dayananda
that he has described in these winged and inspiring
words :

“It is as if one were to walk for a long time
amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser
altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-
clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and
striking elevation. Bui amidst them all, one hill

I. Bunktm-Ttlak-Dayananda, p. 7.

10

Rj^NASUi:.Nl- INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO

stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of
bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its
summit, a solitary pine jutting out into the blue,
a great cascade of pure, vigorous and fertilizing
water gushing out from its strength as a very
fountain of life and health to the valley.”^

Such is indeed the impression created on our minds
by the spiritual phenomenon that Sri Aurobindo is,
— excepting that in this particular case the “ sweep-
ing contours ” too are not lacking but are surpris-
ingly grafted on the lone, sky-labouring lull.

The wise men of the East and the West have
already paid their homage to Rishi Aurobindo.
Fifteen years ago, Rabindranath Tagore wrote thus
of Sri Aurobindo :

“ At the very first sight I could realize that
he had been seeking for the soul and had gained
it, and through this long process of realization had
accumulated within him a silent power of inspira-
tion. His face was radiant with an inner light
and his serene presence made it evident to me
that his soul was not crippled and cramped to the
measure of some tyrannical doctrine, which takes
delight in inflicting wounds upon life.

I felt that the utterance of the ancient Hindu
Rishi spoke from him of that equanimity which
gives the human soul its freedom of entrance into
the All. I said to him, ‘ You have the Word and

1. Bankim-Tilak-Dayamnda, p. 4O.

II

^olO -

SRI AUKOBlNDO

we are waiting to accept it from you. India wili
speak through your voice to the world, Hearken
to me.’

Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere
of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him,

‘ Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabin-
dranath.’ To-day I saw him in a deeper atmos-
phere of reticent richness of wisdom and again
sang to him in silence, ‘ Aurobindo, accept the
salutations from Rabindranath.’ ”

And the late Romain Rolland, in his India on the
March, described Sri Aurobindo as “ the completest
synthesis that has been realized to this day of the
genius of Asia and the genius of Europe and he
remarked further that Sri Aurobindo " the last of
the great Rishis holds in his hand, in firm unrelaxed
grip, the bow of creative energy.” Not only is Sri
Aurobindo one of the leading thinkers of the day,
one who, in his magnum opus, The Life Divine, has
given us ” the greatest book which has been pro-
duced ” in our time^; not only is he one of the great
sons of modern India, ” perhaps the most accomp-
lished ” of present-day Indian thinkers,^ and a great
patriot and a great Yogi ; not only is he a great
humanist, a profound student and critic of classical
and modern literatures, both Indian and European ;

1. Sir Francis Younghusband (in the course of a letter to Dilip).

2. S. Radhakrishnan (in his Foreword to A. C. Das’s Sri Aurobindo
and the Future of Mankind).

RENASCtMi INDIA AND SRI ADKOBINDO

but Sri Aurobindo is also the most versatile, the
most brilliant, and the most astonishingly successful
of the Indian writers of English verse and one of the
supreme masters of English prose. His many-
faceted personality, as it casts its lambent flame on
his poems and his letters and his luminous essays
and his massive treatises, attracts us, fascinates us,
at times even awes us. Let us nevertheless now
venture to draw closer, if possible, to Sri Aurobindo,
and study diligently and reverently the evolution and
constitution of his unique personality.

IV

It must be remembered, however, that the task
is by no means easy. Sri Aurobindo himself once
wrote to his disciple, Dilip Kumar Roy ; “ No

one can write about my life, because it has not been
on the surface for man to see.”^ What do we know
of Valmiki, for instance ? Only this — and what
more do we want ? — that he was the kind of man (or
superman) who could have written (because he did
in fact write) the immortal Ramayana. Likewise,
Sri Aurobindo is the kind of man (or superman) who
is able to live the life he has lived and is living, and
to write the many books that he has in fact written ;

1, From Dilip’s typescript Englisli version of his own Bengali sketch
included in his TirthankaY. I am indebted to Dilip, as also to our com-
mon friend Shankargauda Patil (who introduced me to Dilip and hia
■works), for varied help in the preparation of this book.

13

SRI AUKOBINDO

he is the kind of man who has lived wisely enough,
intensely and richly enough, and, above all, lived
sufficiently in the light of Truth, to he able to write
his many beautiful poems and his innumerable letters
and his great prose treatises. Few amongst us of
the younger generation have had the experience of
seeing him in person. We can but gaze at his
published photograph.s (much as we look at the
supposed portraits of Homer or of Sophocles or of
Shakesjreare) and make whatever fanciful or wild
conjectuics may seem valid or apjiropriale !

There arc, however, the fortunate few who are
privileged to have darshan of Sri Aurobindo, off and
on, in the Yogasram at Pondicherry ; they are
vouchsafed on those rare occasions a vision of the
Purusha in all his majesty and spirituality, and they
do see then something of the unique Person, feel the
stern glare of his Power, and even contact (lie very
waves of his Personality ; and certainly their testi-
mony is very valuable. We have quoted kabindra-
nath Tagore already ; and here is a pen-portrait by
Dilip Kumar Roy :

“ 'A radiant personality !’ — sang the air itself
about him. A deep aura of peace ringed him
round, an ineffable yet concrete peace which drew
you into its orbit. But it was the eyes which
fascinated me most — shining like two beacons in
life's grey waste of waters. His torso was bare

■ except for a scarf thrown across he smiled

kindly, his deep glance spraying peace upon me

14

RENASCENT INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO

somehow, giving me a feeling of his compassion . .
not a mere human compassion but something far
greater !”^

This was the Sri Aurobindo of 1924 : the young
neophyte was deeply stirred, he had indeed found his
guru — the guru of gurus — at last !

But even Dilip finds himself powerless to gauge
adequately Sri Aurobindo’s "inner life." The
many things that, in a strictly material sense, have
happened to Sri Aurobindo are certainly not his
life — and yet these are the only things that we can
clutch at and eagerly, greedily, nay adoringly,
scrutinize ! If we cannot see the secret processes
of Sri Aurobindo’s life, the harmony underlying and
triumphing over, including and exceeding, its in-
finite fluctuations, — let us at least, since it is all that
is left to us, notice the outward accretions, the so-
called " facts and dates " of his terrestrial life !

I. Tirthankar. Dilip'b accouat of his more recent interview with Sri
Aurobindo is also very illuminating. The interview took place on February
4, 1943, but the account of the interview remains so far unpublished.

Part I

HUMANIST AND POET

CHAPTER TWO

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

P

The district of Hoogly in West Bengal — the
district that has given to Bengal and to India two
such world-famous figures as Rammohan and
Ramakrishna — can almost be called the cradle of
the Indian renaissance. Konnagar is a thickly
populated area, almost a small town, in the Hoogly
district ; situated on the west bank of the river
Hoogly (otherwise known as Bhagirathi), it is about
eleven miles to the north of Calcutta. Konnagar
is apparently a place of considerable antiquity, for
it is mentioned in old Bengali literature. The
Mitras and the Ghoses of Konnagar have carved
out creditable names for themselves in the political
and cultural history of Bengal. Among the many
outstanding men who have sprung up from the
fertile soil of Konnagar, special mention may be
made of Sib Chandra Deb, a leader of the Brahmo
Samaj movement and one of the greatest philan-
thropists that ever Bengal has produced and,
besides, one whose munificence gave Kormagar

I. I am indebted to Sri Sisirkumar Mitra of Sri Aurobindo Asraiii
who kindly conveyed to me, through my friend Shankargauda Patil,
much of the information contained in this section.

2

19

SRI AUKOJBlMJJU

most of its public institutions ; Dr. Trailokyanath
Mitra and Raja Digambar Mitra, once well-known
figures in Bengal’s political life ; Raja Dr. Rajendra-
lal Mitra, the famous antiquarian ; and Mahamaho-
padhyaya Dinabandhu Nyayaratna, the eminent
Sanskrit scholar.

In the reputed Ghose family of Konnagar,
Krishnadhan Ghose was born about 1840, his
parents being Kaliprasad Ghose, a man of status
and substance, and Srimati Kailasabasini Devi, a
lady widely known for her remarkable beauty, her
feeling for religion and her exceptional piety.
Young Krishnadhan had a meritorious school and
college career ; he passed the Entrance Examination
of the Calcutta University from the local school in
the year 1858 and then proceeded to the Calcutta
Medical College. When he was in his fourth year
at the Medical College, he married Srimati Swarna-
lata Devi, the elde.st daughter of Rishi Rajnarayan
Bose. It was an alliance of two authentic and
forceful currents in the inner life of Bengal. A
student of Henry Derozio and David Hare, Raj-
narayan Bose was an early synthesis of the East and
the West, and in the heyday of his hallowed life
‘ ‘ represented the high water-mark of the composite
culture of the country — ^Vedantic, Iskimic and
European.”^ He was a leader of the Brahmo Samaj

I. The quotation is taken from an article on the life of Sri Aurobindo,
extracted from Svaraj and published in The Karmayogin in the 7th and
succeeding issues of that paper.

9 *

20

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

in its palmiest days, he was one of the makers of
modern Bengal, and he is not inaptly described as
the “ grandfather of Indian nationalism but at
the same time, the fire of spirituality burned steadily
within him and his ardent love for India revealed
itself in many acts of adoration and benevolence.
On the occasion of his death in 1899, his grandson
(Sri Aurobindo) wrote a touching sonnet entitled
Transit, non Periit :

Not in annihilation lost, nor given
To darkness art thou fled from us and light,

O strong and sentient spirit ; no mere heaven
Of ancient joys, no silence eremite
Received thee ; but the omnipresent Thought
Of which thou wast a part and earthly hour.

Took back its gift. Into that splendour caught
Thou hast not lost thy special brightness. Power
Remains with thee and the old genial force
Unseen for blinding light, not darkly lurks . . . . l

When Krishnadhan Ghose left Calcutta for
England to undergo a course of advanced medical
studies, it was his father-in-law’s earnest wish that
the young sojourner in the West will not allow
himself to be dazed and denationalized by the
civilization of the Occident. Dr. Krishnadhan
Ghose returned to India in due course with an M. D.
from the Aberdeen University, full of honours and
bristling with plans for the future ; he was now a

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 34.

SRI AUROIilNDU

confirmed believer in Western civilization, he turned
his back on things Indian, he wished India could
transform herself overnight into another self-confi-
dent and puissant England ; but although he was,
as a result of his English trip, perilously poised on
the bleak slopes of agnosticism, his innate humanity
was as potent as ever, he sensed the ills of maimed
and ailing humanity, and he early decided to dedicate
himself to the unstinted service of the people. His
was a noble and lovable countenance, and once a
Christian missionary exclaimed to Rajnarayan :
” I have never seen such a sweet face as his !” In
the course of a few years. Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose
came to be acclaimed as one of the most successful
civil surgeons of his day.

On his return from England, the orthodox sec-
tions of Konnagar wanted Dr. Krishnadhan — as
was the custom in those days and till recently' — ^to
go through the ceremony of prayaschitta or purifi-
cation for having voyaged beyond the seas. Dr.
Krishnadhan refused to go through the ceremony
and preferred rather to leave his village for good.
He sold away — “ for a song ” as it were — his house
and his property to a local Brahmin in accordance
with his plighted word, turning down the more
tempting offer made by one of his own relations.
Anyhow he left the place of his birth and moved
from district to district as the Government Civil
Surgeon, rendering as a mere matter of course true
succour to countless numbers of distressed people.

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

In Bhagalpur, Rungpur and Khulna, and especially
in the last place. Dr. Krishnadhan’s name became
almost a household word. Individuals and institu-
tions alike benefited by their fruitful association with
Dr. Krishnadhan, whose uncalculating and generous
nature ever gave away without let or hindrance.
“ Keen of intellect, tender of heart, impulsive and
generous almost to recklessness, regardless of his
own wants, but sensitive to the sufferings of others
— ^this was the inventory of the character of Dr.
Krishnadhan Ghose.”^

Not only was Dr. Krishnadhan a capable Civil
Surgeon and a true friend of the people, but he was
also alertly responsive to the literary and social
cross-currents of his day. He took keen interest in
the social welfare of the people and he evinced —
despite the fact that he was " essentially a product
of English education and European culture — great
enthusiasm for the works of Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee. Being a persona grata with European
as well as Bengalee society. Dr. Krishnadhan was
able to act as a link, a bridge, between the two ; and,
indeed, he was called the " Suez Canal,” for his
house served as a common meeting place, day after
day, for both Europeans and Bengalees. During
the greater part of his active life. Dr. Krishnadhan
was also blessed with the companionship of his
charming wife, Srimati Swarnalata Devi, who was in

1 & 2. The Karmayogin, No. 7.

23

SRI AUROBINDO

fact known as the “ Rose of Rungpur ” during their
stay in that district town. It was only towards the
close of her life that she fell a victim to an unfor-
tunate malady.

II

Aurobindo Ghose was born at about 5 a.m. in
Calcutta on the 15th August, 1872, the third son of
Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose and Srimati Swarnalata
Devi , — non sine dis animosiis infans (a bi'ave babe,
surely, and some god’s special care) !;

Aurobindo’s father, Dr. Krishnadhan, — true to
his own deep convictions and in conformity with the
practice of many other educated Indians of his time
who had capitulated to the glamour of the West —
wished to give his children a wholly European type
of education. He therefore sent Aurobindo, along
with his brothers Benoybhushan and Manmohan,
to the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling.
Aurobindo was then only five years old !

We know little about Aurobindo’s school life,
but it appears his teachers in Darjeeling were
profoundly impressed by his sparkling and wide-
awake intelligence and the singular sweetness of his
nature. The companions of the Ghose brothers in
the school and in the boarding-house were all
English children and, of course, English was the sole
medium of instruction in school and the channel of
communication outside. A sort of exile in his own

I, Horace, Odes, III, 4, 1 . 20.

24

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUlH

country, Aurobindo thus started lisping in English
at the age of five ; “ in the shadow of the Himalayas,
in sight of the wonderful snow-capped peaks, even
in their native land they were brought up in alien
surroundings.”^

Aurobindo — ^we may presume — passed the brief
Darjeeling period of his life somewhat like a ” care-
less beam his ‘ psyche ’ must nevertheless have
stored rich and lasting impressions of this period,
because passages like the following seem to be born
of intense and personal experience :

He journeyed to the cold north and the hills
Austere, past Budricayshwur ever north,

Till, in the sixth month of his pilgrimage

Uneasy, to a silent place he came

Within a heaped enormous region piled

With prone far-drifting hills, huge peaks overwhelmed

Under the vast illimitable snows, —

Snow on ravine, and snow on cliff, and snow
Sweeping in strenuous outlines to heaven,

With distant gleaming vales and turbulent rocks.

Giant precipices black-hewn and bold
Daring the universal whiteness ; last,

A mystic gorge into some secret world.

He in that region waste and wonderful
Sojourned, and morning-star and evening-star
Shone over him and faded, and immense
Darkness wrapped the hushed mountain solitudes
And moonlight's brilliant muse and the cold stars
And day upon the summits brightening. “

1. Lokita Basu, Indian V/riters of English Verse, p. loi.

2, Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 54-5.

SKI AUKUBINUO

Is it Pururavas or Aurobinclo that thus stands
charmed and enraptured, gazing at the “ immortal
summits ?” Probably, it is both !

Ill

In 1879, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose and his wife
took Aurobinclo and his brothers, Benoybhushan
and Manmohan, to England. The children were
entrusted to an English family, the Drewetts, in
Manchester ; it was expected that, under the foster-
ing care of the Drewetts, the children would grow
up into typical products of Western culture, uncon-
taminated by Oriental ways and ideas. It was
during this visit that Srimati Swarnalata Devi gave
birth to Barindra Kumar Ghose in England.

While Aurobindo’s two brothers were sent to
the Manchester Grammar School, Aurobindo him-
self was educated privately by Mr. and Mrs. Drewett.
Drewett was an accomplished Latin scholar ; he
did not teach Aurobindo Greek, but grounded him
well in Latin. It appears Aurobindo also played
cricket in Mr. Drewett’s garden, though not at all
well ! Presently the Drewetts had to leave Man-
chester for Australia, and hence Aurobindo was
sent to St. Paul’s School, London, in 1885. The
Head Master of St. Paul’s, impressed by Aurobindo’s
character and abilities, took him up to ground him
in Greek, and then pushed him rapidly into the
higher classes of the school.

CHIi-DHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

Five years more passed ; young Aurobindo had
acquired a very considerable proficiency in the
classics and he was therefore enabled to proceed tO'
King’s College, Cambridge, with a Senior Classical
Scholarship of the value of 0 o per year. Mr.
Oscar Browning, then a well-known figure at
Cambridge, immediately recognized Aurobindo’a
unusual talents.

Aurobindo had given his whole-hearted atten-
tion to the classics at Manchester and at St. Paul’s ;
but even at St. Paul’s, in the last three years he
simply went through his prescribed school course
and spent most of his spare time in general readings
giving particular attention to English poetry, liter-
ature and fiction, French literature, and the history
of ancient, mediaeval and modern Europe. He
spent much time too in writing poetry. As for the
prescribed courses of studies, they engaged but
little of his time ; he was already at ease in them,
and did not therefore think it necessary or profitable
to labour over them any longer. All the same, he
was able to win all the prizes in King’s College in
one year for Greek and Latin verse, etc.

In 1890, Aurobindo appeared for the Indian
Civil Service examination and passed it with credit,
scoring record marks in Greek and Latin. At the
end of the period of probation, however, he avoided
appearing for the departmental Riding examination.
He felt no call for the I.C.S. and wished to escape
from that bondage. By certain manoeuvres he

27

SRI AUKOBINJJO

managed to get himself disqualified for Riding
without himself rejecting the service, which he
knew his family would not have allowed him to do.

In the meantime, Sri Aurobiiido was pursuing
his studies in many directions. He spent some
time also over learning Italian, some German and a
little Spanish. In due course, he passed the First
part of the Classical Tripos examination in the first
■class. It is on passing this First Part that the degree
of B.A. is usually given ; but as he had only two
years at his disposal, he had to pass it in his second
year at Cambridge. But as the First Part gives the
degree only if it is taken in the third year, Aurobindo,
since he had taken the degree in the second year,
would have had to appear for the Second Part of the
Tripos in the fourth year to qualify for the degree.
He might even so have got the degree if he had
made an application for it, but he did not care to
do so. He did not presumably think a degree as
such valuable, since he had then no intention of
taking up a purely academic career.

It must be added here that during this period
Dr. Krishnadhan's remittances to his sons tended to
be both irregular and inadequate ; necessarily,
therefore, Aurobindo, along with Benoybhushan
and Manmohan, was often in straitened circum-
stances. He experienced in a real measure “ hard-
ships ” and even “ starvation but he managed

I. Sri Autobindo’s Letter to Dilip (193s).
'>8

chij^jjhoou, boyhood and youth

safely to pull through somehow with the help of his
scholarship and the practice of economy.

Aurobindo was barely twenty years old, but he
had even at that early and tender age achieved rare
academic distinctions. He had mastered Greek and
Latin, English and French ; and he had also acquired
sufEcient familiarity with other continental languages
like German and Italian. In short, he had won the
master-key that was to unlock the sumless treasuries
of Western culture. Aurobindo was young and
earnest and not seldom taciturn and meditative ; he
was a learned young man, he was possessed of a
subtle intelligence and a receptive memory. He was
sfensitive to beauty in man and Nature, he responded
to the authentic with his whole soul, he watched
with abhorrence the thousand and one instances of
man’s cruelty to man ; indeed, he had felt even
from early childhood a strong hatred and disgust
for all kinds of cruelty and oppression, and as he
grew older the feeling but progressively deepened
and grew more and more poignant. For fourteen
years he had lived in England, divorced from the
culture of his forefathers ; he had developed “ foreign
tastes and tendencies " and he had been ” dena-
tionalized ” like his own country itself.^ But he
was destined to change all that and to re-nationalize
himself !

In the meantime, Aurobindo was in search of a

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. s8"9'
2Q

SRI AUROBlNJ)(!

suitable job. He obtained, with the help of James
Cotton, Six Henxy Cotton’s brother, an introduction
to H.Ii. the late Sayaji Rao, Gaekwar of Baroda,
during his visit to England ; the interview was a
success, and Aurobindo secured a promising ap-
pointment in the Baroda State Service. He accord-
ingly left England for India in F’ebruary 1893.

IV

Aurobindo, like his brother Manmohan, — ^they
were, indeed, in the Horatian phrase, par nobile
fratrum, a noble pair of brothers — had started writ-
iirg English verse even during his stay in England.
Some of the poems written by Aurobindo between
his eighteenth and twentieth years were published
in book form soon after his return to India. We
shall glance at some of these poems before we follow
him to Baroda.

A poet’s first essays in verse are akin to promis-
sory notes ; they have some value, no doubt, by
themselves — the “ face value ’’ as we call it ; but
the main thing is that they give the reader alluring
hopes of the future when he could redeem the notes
at last and line his long purse with hard cash in
shining silver and gold.

Aurobindo ’s early adventures in English verse
were the promissory notes of a millionaire confident
of his credit. Thus his “juvenile” poems snap
Aurobindo in various emotional and intellectual
attitudes and show also his growing mastery of verse

30

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

technique ; the poems, taken as a whole, constitute
a fine record of the education and ideas and imagina-
tions and feelings created by a purely European
culture. No doubt the derivative element is prom-
inent in much of Aurobindo's early verse. The
names and lineaments and allusions cannot but
appear rather exotic to an Indian reader ; but, then,
knowing as he did at the time hardly anything about
India and her culture, Aurobindo could not have
done otherwise. Besides, the literary echoes are
many, and are drawn from varied sources ; the
result, however, is invariably very good verse
and not seldom true poetry.

Songs to Myrtilla^ opens with an interesting
colloquy between Glaucus and .<Ethon, who extol
the felicities of night and day respectively. When
yEthon sings :

But day is sweeter ; morning bright

Has put the stars out ere the light, ^

we are inevitably reminded of the opening stanza
of Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam. But these echoes
do not matter ; at times they even enhance the
fascination of t^he fabric of the verse. Aurobindo
is young and enthusiastic ; he cannot choose but see
and hear ; he cannot choose but catch, like the shower
in the sunshine, dazzling rainbow hues and present

1. Songs to Myrtilla, containing for the most part Aurobindo's juvenile
work, was printed in 1895 at Baroda for private circulation only.

2. CoUecled Poems and Plays, I, p. i.

SRI AUROBINIK)

them for our edificat.ioii. These early poems of
Aurobindo’s are thus very sensuous and impassioned,
and one often lights upon evocations of sound and
colour as in the following passages :

Behold in emerald fire
The Kpotted lizard crawl
Upon ihc Min-kissed wall
And coil in tangled brake
The green and sliding snake
Under die red-rose briar.

His rose-lit cheeks, his eyes’ prile bloom
Were sorrow’s anieioom ;

His wings did cause melodious moan ;

His mouth was like a rose o’crblown ;

The cypress-garland of renown
Did make his shadowy crown ^

And I have ever known him wild
And merry as a child,

As roses red, as roses sweet,

The west wind in his feet,

Tulip-girdled, kind and bold,

With heart’s-ease in. his curls of gold . . . , “

Oh yes— oh dear yes — ^the lines glide along easily,
very easily, the very conceits are pretty and con-
vincing, and we are not, after all, so very much put
out by the company of the Florimels and Gymotheas
and Myrtillas and Dryads who seem to people this
strange and far country.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 3-4.

2. Ibid., I, p, 5.

3. Ibid,, 1, p, 6.

^2

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

This is what has apparently happened : a super-
sensibility for Greek and a true feeling for English
sound values have enabled the youthful Aurobindo
to invoke the blushful Hippocrene herself with
striking success. What can be more sensuously
Keatsian than Night by the Sea, that tantalizing
poem of beauty and mystery and love's languor and
romance :

Love, a moment drop thy hands ;

Night within my soul expands.

Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair
In that dark and showering hair.

Coral kisses ravish not

When the soul is tinged with thought . . . . ^

All the lights of spring are ended,

To the wintry haven wended.

Beauty's boons and nectarous leisure,

Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure,

Cheeks enrosed. Love’s natal soil.

Breasts, the ardent conqueror’s spoil,

Spring rejects ; a lovelier child
His brittle fancies has beguiled ^

And SO on ... . the trochaic measure and the clinch-
ing couplets assault the reader with their sheer
momentum ; and we hear too, not only of Edith
and of " soft narcissi's golden camp," but also of
“ the widening East ” and of the " rose of Indian
grain.”

I, Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. i8.

SRI AUROllINnO

The same mclrical proficiency can also be
marked in poems like The Lover’s Complaint and
Love in Sorrow ; neither the burden of classical
allusion in the I'ormer nor the accents of romantic
frustration that punctuate the latter should blind us
to the reality of poignant grief that Husiains the two
pieces as moving utterances in verse. Occasionally
the reader is intrigued : what, for instance, is the
significance of these six lines :

For there was tiouc who loved me, no, not one.

Alas, what was there that a man should love ?

For I was misery's last aucl fraile.st son
And even my mother bade me homeic.ss lovc.

And I had wronged my youth and nobler powers
By weak attempts, small failures, wasted hours. ^

Whose “glorious beauty stained with gold" the
poet will behold no more ? Who is “ mother
Arethuse ” to whom he bids this sad farewell ? It
is perilous — and generally futile — to turn from
poetry to poetolatry. The poems are, perhaps,
just poems, temperamental effusions in terms of
impassioned verse ; or — who knows ? — ^Aurobindo
was indirectly giving expression to his personal
emotions on the eve of his departure from England.

This was how, perhaps, it all happened. Auro-
bindo looked back at the past fourteen years— years
of study and aspiration, of loneliness and partial
fulfilment. During this period he had developed
an attachment to English and European thought and

I , Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 24-5.

34

CJdXLJJHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

literature, though not to England as a country ;
although his brother, Manmohan, had for a time
actually looked upon England as his adopted country,
Aurobindo never did so ; and it was France — not
England — ^that intellectually and emotionally fascin-
ated Aurobindo, notwithstanding the fact that he had
neither lived in it nor seen it. Thus the thought of
leaving England induced no real regrets in Auro-
bindo. He had developed no sentimental attach-
ment to the immediate past — ^the stay of fourteen
years in England — and he had no misgivings about
the future either. He had made few friendships in
England, and none very intimate ; he had, as a
matter of fact, never found the mental atmosphere
in England congenial to his own unique predilec-
tions and aspirations. Anyhow, he was leaving
England, — but why had he ever been sent away by
his Mother — “ Mother of might. Mother free ” —
to that far country ? Aurobindo felt the flutter of
unutterable thoughts, and, in any case, the by-
product was poetry !

V

Aurobindo had other things also to occupy his
thoughts, — politics, for instance, and the glamorous
careers of poets and politicians. His Hie Jacet
(Glasnevin Cemetery) and Charles Stewart Parnell
1891 are both vigorous expressions of Aurobindo's
political sensibility. Their clarity and strength
make the poems immediately effective.

3

35

SRI AUROBINUO

Like Macaulay's A Jacobite's Epilaph, Auro-
bindo’s Hie Jaccl also achieves its severe beauty
thi'ough sheer economy of words ; Aurobindo’s
theme, the very rliythm and language of the poem,
all carry one’s mind back to Macaulay's poem ; and
Jacobean or Irish patriot, the end is the same :
“ Behold your guerdon ” — “ a broken heart 1” The
influence of Macaulay’s poem on Aurobindo must,
however, have been unconscious, for he seems never
to have read The Lays of Ancieyit Rome after early
childhood ; A jaenhile’s Epitaph, in particular, had
made little impression on Aurobindo and he had
not probably read it even twice, All the same, the
two poems deserve to be studied together.

The six lines on Parnell, again, are very vividly
phrased, and the fifth line is truly memorable :

Thou loo well Ihen a child of liagic earth h

Aurobindo’s growing control over the subtle me-
chanism of poetic utterance is exemplified also in
the force, the wisdom and the metallic finish of this
portrait of Goethe :

A perfect face amid barbaiian faces,

A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme.

Traveller with calm, inimitable pace,s,

Critic with judgment absolute to all time,

A complete strength when men were maimed and weak.

Admirer of Goethe and Parnell, lover of Greece
and Ireland, young Aurobindo wanted to lay the

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. lo.
a. Ibid., I, p. 9,

36

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

deep foundations of his Faith, to plan and work out
the details of his future course of Action. We have
seen that Aurobindo wrote feelingly about Ireland's
fight for freedom ; but wasn't he thinking, in fact,
of his own country and the things that needed to be
done there before she could redeem herself in her
own and in the eyes of the world ?

Aurobindo’ s nonage was over ; he would be an
exile in England no more. He was going back to
India, to serve under the Gaekwar of Baroda ; he
cast one last look at the many-chambered edifice of
European culture, European thought and literature,
and thus uttered his " Envoi

For in Sicilian olive-groves no more
Or seldom must my footprints now be seen.

Nor tread Athenian lanes, nor yet explore
Parnassus or thy voiceful shores, O Hippocrene.

Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati
Has called to regions of eternal snow
And Ganges pacing to the southern sea,

Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow.^

No more could he devote himself to Greek poetry
as he had done during the past few years ; no more,
would he exchange alexandrines and hexameters
with the faded poets of ancient Greece and Rome ;
no more would he feel the heart-beats of European
culture in all its vivacity and strength. That

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 36.

SRI AlIROBlNDO

chapter was ended ; and — " Tomorrow to fresh
woods, and pastures new I"

It is significant also that Aurpbindo is now
talking of the Ganges and of the “ regions of eternal
snow ” rather than of Baroda or its nearest river or
mountain-range. Baroda would be a .stepping-
stone, convenient and welcome enough, but Auro-
bindo’s real work would lie elsewhere ; and he seems
to have known it — somehow very clearly glimpsed
it — from the very outset.

38

CHAPTER THREE

BARODA

I

Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in India was preceded
by bis father Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose's death in
peculiarly tragic circumstances. Incorrect news of
Sri Aurobindo’s sailing by a steamer which was
wrecked near Lisbon and of his death in the wreck
were reported to him. The news came to Dr.
Krishnadhan as a stunning blow : he concluded
that Aurobindo was lost to him for ever, and even
his brave stout heart broke, he had a collapse, and
he died at last uttering Aurobindo’s name in lament-
ation. Aurobindo only left England by a much
later steamer. In due course his brothers too
arrived : Benoybhushan obtained an employment
under H.H, the Maharaja of Coochbehar, Man-
mohan became a Professor of English at the Calcutta
Presidency College, and Aurobindo entered the
service of H.H, the Maharaja of Baroda. The
boys had come home and were now stalwart young
men, determined to do well, — but Dr. Krishna-
dhan’ s strong heroic soul had already passed away !

Sri Aurobindo was now in Baroda, and he spent
the next thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the

39

KRl AURDBINUO

Barocla SlatcSeivice. He was put first in the Selllc-
inent Department, not avS an officer, hut to learn
work ; then in the Stamps and Revenue Departments ;
he was also lor some time put to work in the Secre-
tariate for drawing up dispatches, etc. Finally, he
oscillated towards the Baroda College and entered
it, at first as part-time lecturer in French, afterwards
as a regular professor teaching English ; and, finally,
he became Vice-Principal of the College, Mean-
while, whenever he thought lit, the Maharaja would
send for Sri Aurobindo for writing letters, compos-
ing speeches or drawing up documents of various
kinds which needed special care in the phrasing of
the language, At one time, the Maharaja asked Sri
Aurobindo to instruct him in English grammar hy
giving exact and minute rules for each construction,
etc. But all this was c^uite informal, and he was
called for the occasion to do miscellaneous things
like the writing of an order, or a lei ter to the British
Government, or some other document. Once Sri
Aurobindo was specially sent for to Ooty in order to
prepare a precis of the whole Bapat case and the
judicial opinions on it. Fie was also for a lime at
Naini Tal with the Maharaja. He was appointed'
regular Private Secretary to the Maharaja at the time
of the Kashmir tour ; but there was much friction
between them during the tour, and accordingly the
experiment was not repeated. On the whole, Sri
Aurobindo was brilliant and quick and efficient in
work, though he was not exactly the ideal servant

40

BAROUA

for an Indian Maharaja, The Maharaja, on his
part, gave Sri Aurobindo a certificate for ability and
intelligence, but also for lack of punctuality and
regularity. With the Court as such, however, Sri
Aurobindo had nothing whatever to do during the
whole course of his stay in Baroda.

Sri Aurobindo’s most intimate friend at Baroda
was Lieutenant Madhavrao Jadhav, who was asso-
ciated with him in his political ideas and projects
and helped him in later years, whenever possible,
in his political work. Most of the time he was in
Baroda, Sri Aurobindo lived with Madhavrao in his
house. During his early years in Baroda, Sri
Aurobindo took very little interest in philosophy.
He was not attached to metaphysics and found
the disputes of dialectical ratiocination too abstract,
abstruse and inconclusive. He had read something
of Plato as well as Epictetus and the Lucretian
statement of the ideas of Epicurus. Only such
philosophical ideas as could be made dynamic for
life interested him. He had made no study of
metaphysics and knew only the general ideas of
some European philosophers as any general reader
might know them. Of the Indian philosophers
also he had read only something of their conclu-
sions. His first acquaintance with Indian spiritua-
ality was through the sayings of Ramakrishna and
the writings and speeches of Vivekananda. He
had an immense admiration for Vivekananda and a
much deeper feeling for Ramakrishna. But he did

41

SRT AUKOJUNDO

not altogether accejit Vivekananda’s philosophy or
stand-point; and though spiritual experiences in-
terested him greatly, and he had some himself, he
was not moved towards the practice of Yoga. His
experiences began iir England, and from tlic moment
he stepircd on the shores of India they began to
be more IrequenL But he did not associate them
with Yoga about which at that time he knew nothing.
At one time he was asked by his Cambridge friend
K. G, Deshpande, who was a sadhak, to lake up the
practice of Yoga, but he refu.sed to do so because it
seemed to him a retreat from lile.

To a stray observer, however, it must have
appeared then that Sri Aurobindo had settled down
to a career of dislirrguished service in the Baroda
State. He had married, too, a chtirining and beauti-
ful lady, Srimati Mrinalini Devi, and he was thu.s
apparently happy with himself and the world, it
appears that he did not care very much to surround
himself with the lineaments of pomp and luxury,
but lived rather — to use that most hackneyed
phrase — a life of ” plain living and high thinking,”
He read incessantly, he pondered over what he had
read, and he often spent the livelong hours writing
a new poem or concocting one more thoughtful
essay redolent of wit and wisdom.

Sri Aurobindo’ s students at the Baroda College
seem to have admired and loved him (of course, we
know they had no option in the matter !) ; many of
his former pupils — ^Mr. fC. M. Munshi, for instance.

42

BAROUA

— have eloquently testified to his tremendous hold
on the undergraduates ; they seem really to have
hung upon his lips in those now remote days, when
he lectured to his pupils, whether in the class room
or in the debating union. At first, perhaps, Sri
Aurobindo could not acclimatize himself to Indian
conditions ; his lectures were a bit “ too stiff” and
would not easily go down the throats of the average
undergraduates ; but very soon Sri Aurobindo took
the measure of his wards and made himself both an
inspiring professor and a most instructive and
illuminating teacher of English.

However, Sri Aurobindo could not help con-
trasting Indian educational conditions with condi-
tions in London and in Cambridge. The puny
stature of the average Indian undergraduate must
have sorely pained Sri Aurobindo. How true was
it of the Indian scholar, as it was true (in quite
another sense) of Dryden's Achitophel :

A fiery soul, which working out its way.

Fretted the pigmy body to decay :

And o'er informed the tenement of clay.^

No proper appreciation of the value of physical
culture, no sheer joy in the act and art of healthy
living ; on the contrary, turning spectacled book-
worms at a tender age, the Indian scholar was given
to excessive intellectual inbreeding ; what wonder.

I. Absalom and Achitophel, 11 . 156-8.

43

SRI AUUcmiMDO

then, that his I’cncral oullook was severely pessimis-
tic in consequence ! I’he Indian scholar ripened
fast — all ton fast- and “ there an end !” What Sri
Aurobindo said with reference to ihe “ cultured
Bengali ” was — and still is -fairly applicahlc to the
average cultured Indian elsewhere also ;

“ The cultured Bengali begins life with a
physical temperament already delicate and high-
strung. He has the literary constitution with its
femincity and acute nervousness. Subiect this to
a cruel strain when it is tcnclcrcsl and needs the
moat careful rearing, to the wicked and wantonly
cruel strain of instruction through a foreign
tongue ; put it under the very worst system of
training ; add enormous academical labour, im-
mense official drudgery in an unhealthy climate
and constant mental application. . .

Sri Aurobindo pondered over all these engines of
our limitation and suffering, he took them to heart*
and he was profoundly dissatisfied with the dismal
state of affairs in his beloved country.

II

Soon after his arrival in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo,
having already taken stock of the political situation
in the country, started contributing anonymously,
at the instance of Mr. K. G. Deshpande, who was

I. Indu Prakash, Article on Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, July 1S94.

44

BARODA

then the editor of the Indu Prakash, a series of out-
spoken articles under the challenging general caption,
“ New Lamps for Old.” The articles revealed at
once a young man’s intolerance and self-confident
assertiveness and a wise man’s deep and abiding
wisdom. Sri Aurobindo began the series with the
well-known, yet none-the-less startling, question :
” If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall
into a ditch ?”^ It was about nine years since the
Indian National Congress had commenced its acti-
vities with a blazing fanfare of trumpets and deafen-
ing bugle-sounds, — but where was the Promised
Land ?

” The walls of the Anglo-Indian Jericho stand
yet without a breach, and the dark spectacle of
Penury draws her robe over the land in greater
volume and with an ampler sweep.”

Sri Aurobindo would have his compatriots realize
that ” our actual enemy is not any force exterior to
ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our
cowardice, our purblind sentimentalism and he
had no doubt, therefore, that " our appeal, the
appeal of every high-souled and self-respecting
nation, ought not to lie to the opinion of the Anglo-
Indians, no, nor yet to the British sense of justice,
but to our own reviving sense of manhood, to

I. This and the succeeding quotations are extracted from Sri Auro-
bindo’s contributions to Indu Prakash from August 7, 1893 to March 6,
1894.

45

SRT AURonlNJiC)

our own sincere fellow-fcelinp;. . . .with the silent
and suffering people of India.'’

In .subsequent articles, Sri Auroldndo tried to
show that the Indian National Congress of those
days was not a popular body, that the Congress
leaders were .swearing by false political gods (es-
pecially (jf the British make), and that the Indian
patriot had more to learn from the French experi-
ment than, from the British ;

“ ... .if we cast our glance across the English
channel, wc shall witness a very different and more
animating spectacle. Gifted with a lighter, sub-
tler, and clearer mind than their in.sular neigh-
bours, the French people have moved irresistibly
towards a social and not a political development.”
Sri Aurobindo then showed that if, like the British,
we have laid the foundations of social collapse, wc
have also, like the French, laid the foundations of
political incompetence. And Sri Aurobindo con-
cluded by aflirming that ‘‘our national effort must
contract a social and popular tendency before it can
hope to be great or fruitful.”

The first two articles in the ‘‘ New Lamps for
Old ” series made a sensation, and frightened
Mahadev Govind Ranade and other Congress
leaders. Ranade accordingly warned the proprietor
of the Indu Prakash that, if the series were continued
in the same tone, he would surely be prosecuted for
sedition. The original plan of ” New Lamps for
Old ” had thus to be abandoned at the proprietor’s

46

BARODA

instance ; the editor, however, requested Sri Auro-
bindo to continue the series in a modified tone, and
he reluctantly consented to do so, but he felt no
further interest in the series and the articles were
written and published at long intervals and finally
dropped of themselves altogether. Sri Aurobindo'
withdrew into his shell, and decided to exploit a
more favourable opportunity for both outlining his
views and translating them in terms of practical
politics.

Incidentally, these nine political essays and the
seven essays in criticism, inspired by the personality
and achievement of Bankim Chandra, that followed,
are the earliest exhibits that we have of Sri Auro-
bindo's prose style. Already we notice in them the
sinuosity and balance, the imagery and colour, the
trenchancy and sarcasm, that were to distinguish
Sri Aurobindo’s later and maturer writings, hie
argues with cogency and subtlety ; he describes with
picturesqueness and particularity ; and he denounces,
if denounce he must, with remorseless and deadly
accuracy. This about the “ civilians “ of about
five decades ago :

" A shallow schoolboy stepping from a cram-
ming establishment to the command of high and
difficult affairs can hardly be expected to give us
anything magnificent or princely. Still less can
it be expected when the sons of small tradesmen
are suddenly promoted from the counter to govern
great provinces Bad in training, void of

47

SRI AUROBINDO

culture, in instruction poor, it (education in
England) is in plain truth a sort of education that
leaves him with all his imperfections on his head,
unmannerly, uncultivated, unintelligent."

As for Mr. Munro (alas, oblivion has all but swal-
lowed him up, — but in. his day he seems to have
done some injury to Bankim Chandra), he was just
a — " badly-educated hyena !" There is no need to
multiply quotations : these early prose compositions
are indeed as worthy of our scrutiny as are Sri
Aurobindo's juvenile poems, because their author —
let us not forget it ! — ^was Sri Aurobindo.

in

It is alas only too true that several of the Indians
who are (in the expressive phrase) " England
returned " — shall we say, returned " with thanks ?"
— try absurdly to assume the god, affect a superior
nod, and seem to shake the spheres of indigenous
life and culture. Sri Aurobindo was different ; a
stay of fourteen years in England had enabled him,
not only to observe the multifoliate lineaments of
European culture, but also to see ihrough them and
find them wanting. Returning to India, he found
to his chagrin that the “ educated" classes were still
trying to ape the foreigner ; most of them had given
their hearts away, " a sordid boon." Our educa-
tional machinery, our ruling ideas, our imported
models, all were shoddy in appearance and poisonous
in their effects. As he wrote some years later :

48

BARODA

“ The nineteenth century in India was imita-
tive, self-forgetful, artificial. It aimed at a
successful reproduction of Europe in India,
forgetting the deep saying of the Gita — 'Better
the law of one’s own being though it be badly
done than an alien dharma well followed ; death
in one’s own dharma is better, it is a dangerous
thing to follow the law of another’s nature.’ For
death in one's own dharma brings new birth,
success in an alien path means only successful
suicide.”^

And yet, miraculously, India did not die a
spiritual death ; that tragedy, " enacted more than
once in history,” was somehow averted in the case
of India. And the reasons are not far to seek.
The Indian countryside had all along remained
inveterately Indian ; and men like Dayananda,
Ramakrishna and Ranade were able, in varying
degrees, to stem the tide of denationalization and
assert the claims of the Indian genius to live its own
life and win its own spiritual laurels even in our
materialistic age. Here was the ” irrational ” pheno-
menon that saved India ! Sri Ramakrishna
himself but lived ” what many would call the life
of a mad man, a man without intellectual training,
a man without any outward sign of culture or civil-
ization, a man who lived on the alms of others,
such a man as the English educated Indian would

i

I. The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 35.

49

SIU AUKCjmiMDO

ordinal ily talk of as one useless to society, though
not a bane to society. He will say : ‘ This man is

ignorant. What does he know ? What can he
teach me who have received from the West all that
it can teach ?' But God knew what he was doing.
He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple
of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and
South, and East and West, the educated men, men
who were the pride of the university, who had .studied
all that Eur'opc can teach, came to fall at the feet
of this ascetic. The work of salvation, the work
of raising India wa.s begun.

Sri Aurobindo took thus very little time to
realize that salvation can come to us, not through
dialectical skill and intellectual subtlety, but only
through faith and stern .spiritual discipline ; not
simply by reading Rant and Hegel and their pre.sent-
day commentator.s but rather by recapturing,
amplifying, and re-living the ancient wisdom of the
Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita. And yet
Sri Aurobindo was never a believer in merely
repeating, parrot-like, the many formulae of the
past : he was for re-making them in the mould of
the present ! As he once wrote to Dilip : " The

traditions of the past are very great in their own
place~in the past. But that is no reason why we
should go on repeating the past, In the evolution
of spiritual consciousness upon earth, a great past

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. 18-9.

BARODA

ought to be followed by a greater future."

IV

It was a momentous transition that Sri Aurobindo
now decided to bring about. The high walls that
had been erected to divide him from his Mother — '
“ Glory of moonlight dreams !’’ — ^must now be
pulled to pieces, and he should be enabled to see her
and hear her and bow to her in whole-hearted
adoration and awe. Ever since his return to India,
Sri Aurobindo felt naturally drawn to Indian culture
and ways of life, and this temperamental feeling
and preference for all that was Indian made it easy
for Irim deliberately to will — and in due course to
achieve — the feat of re-nationalization.

Already, while still in England, Sri Aurobindo
had learned a little Bengali in connection with the
Indian Civil Service examination ; and after coming
to India, he soon learnt enough by his own efforts
to appreciate the novels of Bankim and the
poetry of Madhusudan. Sri Aurobindo now went
further ; he engaged a teacher — a young Bengali
litterateur — and started mastering Bengali, while
unaided he delved into the treasures of Sanskrit
language and literature. He also learned Marathi
and Gujarati and, by and by, some other modern
Indian languages as well. Presently, he was able
to read and appreciate the Sanskrit scriptures, the
classical masterpieces of Kalidasa, the epoch-making
novels of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. He was — ■

SRI AliROlilNDC)

thank God ! — restored to his incommensurable
heritage, and he ■would not be induced to lose it
again ! He was tlirillcd by the poetry of Madhu-
Sudan Dutt and the beautiful and thoughtful
creations of Bankim Chandra. Of the former, Sri
Aurobindo sang an anthem that is both a melodious
dirge and a piece ol’ critical appraisement :

Poet, "who first with skill inspired did teach
Greatness to our divine Bengali speech, — ....

No human hands such notes ambrosial movcil ;

These accents are irot of the imperfect earth ;

Rather the god was voiceful in their birth.

The god himself of the enchanting llutc,

The god himself took up thy pen and wrote.''

And here are the concluding lines of the poem
eulogising Bankim Chandra's services to Bengali
letters :

His nature kingly was and as a god
In large serenity and light he trod
His daily way, yet beauty, like soft flowers
Wreathing a hero's sword, ruled all hh hours.

Thus moving in these iron times and drear,

Barren of bliss and robbed of golden cheer,

He sowed the desert with ruddy-hearted rose,

The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose."

Sri Aurobindo also wrote a series of seven articles
on Bankim Chandra and his works to Indu Prakash
in 1894.

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 33-4.
3. Ibid., I, p, 32.

BAROJJA

Although Sri Aurobindo learned enough even
to conduct a weekly in Bengali, writing most of the
articles himself, his mastery over the language was
not at all the same as over English ; he could make
the English language a lit vehicle for the expression
of the roll and thunder of politics as also of the
peaceful sublime of religious ecstasy, — but he could
never address, to his infinite regret, a Bengali
audience in their own mother-tongued That price,
at any rate, he had to pay for his long, enforced
separation from the Mother.

V

Sri Aurobindo was, indeed, fast re-Indianizing
himself. Nay more ; he was now a convinced
follower of Sanatana Dharma. When he married,
he married in accordance with the agelong rites
prescribed by Sanatana Dharma ; he dethroned the
mere intellect from its usurped seat of sovereignty,
and he decided henceforth to seek the Light through
Yoga.

When Sri Aurobindo realized that, not a way-
ward fancy, but a deep and abiding faith lured him
to the path of Yoga, he plunged straight into its
practice. Some attempt he did make to find a
Guru but without immediate success. No doubt
there were gurus enough in India ; hadn’t Sri
Ramakrishna deplored the paucity of sishyas, rather

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. $8 and 203.

SRI AUROBINDO

than of gurus ? Sri Aurobindo had presently mo-
mentary contacts with Sri Sadguru Brahmananda
• — at Ranganath on the Narmada — though only as a
saintly man, and not as a guru — and had darshan
of and blessings from that great Yogi. The ground
■was already prepared to a certain extent ; and such
contacts quickly planted the seed of spirituality and
'even nurtured it somewhat above the ground. Was
it not a priceless gain in itself that Sri Aurobindo
had realized with Teufelsdrockh that “ Thought
without reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous ?"
The Beast of Intcllectualism was now verily in
chains ; Sri Aurobindo could therefore soar unlram-
pered into the rose-red plane of the Empyrean ; his
spiritual fire-baptism had commenced at last 1 “It
is a wonderful phenomenon," writes Swami Nikhil-
ananda, “ that the consummation of our spiritual
life is reached only when the student comes in
contact with the teacher.’’^ Even though Sri Auro-
bindo had not yet found a guru, he felt himself
drawn to the path of Yoga, he poised himself on its
razor-edge uncertainty and perilousness, he pushed
forward confidently, — although, as yet, he could not
very clearly see his precise destination !

I. Prabuddha Bharata, March. 194a, p. 137.

54

CHAPTER FOUR

TRANSLATIONS

I

The Baroda period saw considerable literary
activity on Sri Aurobindo's part. Soon after his
arrival in Baroda, he started writing poems on Indian
subjects and surroundings, expressing his first
reactions to India and Indian culture after the return
home and a general acquaintance with these things.

Sri Aurobindo’s Bengali studies led him to revel
in the raptures of Chundidas and other ancient
Bengali singers ; his new-born love of Sanskrit led
him to read with perennial admiration, not only the
Upanishads and the Gita, but also the gem-like
verses of Bhartrihari, the plays and poems of Kali-
dasa, and other great masterpieces in Sanskrit liter-
ature. Sri Aurobindo had once exercised his poetic
talent by rendering into English Greek writers like
Plato and Meleager ; he would now similarly reveal
some of the beauties of Bengali and Sanskrit liter-
atures and, incidentally, write some vigorous or
beautiful English verse.

Some of Sri Aurobindo’s English renderings
from Bhartrihari seem to have originally appeared
in the Baroda College Magazine in the eighteen

SRJl AUKOBINOO

nineties.^ But the Niti Shataha as a whole was
published under the title, The Cenlury of Life, only
in 1924. The renderings — they are generally “free”
rather than “literal” — manage to reproduce the
very pith and marrow of the originals ; they exhibit
a rich variety in stanza-forms, and one can judge
Sri Aurobindo’s feeling for the innate beauty of
words even by merely studying the titles : “ The

Human Cobra,” “ Aut Caesar aut Nullus,” “Al-
truism Oceanic,” “ The Immutable Courage,”
” The Script of Fate,” “ Flowers from a Flidden
Root,” “ The Flame of the Soul,” “ Caster Anaides,”
“ The Rainlark to the Cloud,” “ Mountain
Moloy,” “ The Might of Works,” etc.

All — or almost all — these renderings from Bhar-
trihari axe finished exercises in verse that compel
one’s admiration and respect, Only one or two
quotations can be given here to convey a rough idea,
at once of the perspicacity and wisdom of Bhartrihari,
and the grace and epigrammatic finish of the English
renderings. This is about the “ Man of High
Action

Happiness is nothing, sorrow nothing. He
Recks not of these whom his clear thoughts impel
To action, whether little and misetribly
He fare on roots or softly dine and well,

Whether bare ground receive his sleep or bed
With smoothest pillows ease his pensive head,

Whether in rags or heavenly robes he dwell.*

i. Collected Poems and Plea’s, I, Publisher’s Note.

' 2. Ibid., 11 , p. 304.

'le

■U<ANSLA'ilONS

Even more sharply phrased and memorable in
expression are these five lines on the " Proud Soul's
Choice

But one God to worship, hermit Shiv or puissant Vishnu

high ;

But one friend to clasp, the first of men or proud

Philosophy ;

But one home to live in. Earth’s imperial city or the wild ;
But one wife to kiss. Earth's sweetest face or Nature, God’s

own child.

Either in your world the mightiest or my desert solitary^

And — to quote yet one more piece — the telling
contrast elaborated in the following lines on "A
Little Knowledge ” does recall both the razor-edge
clarity and cherry-blossom fragrance of a Japanese
miniature :

When I was with a little knowledge cursed.

Like a mad elephant I stormed about,

And thought myself all-knowing. But when deep-versed
Rich minds some portion of their wealth disbursed
My poverty to raise, then for a lout
And dunce I knew myself, and the insolence went
Out from me like a fever violent.®

Epigrammatic and aphoristic, The Century of
Life is reared upon experience and worldly wisdom,
and the incandescent fury of poetic imagination but
fitfully shines upon these verses. Nevertheless the
verses are crystal-pure and also crystal-clear, and

1. Collected Poeins and Plays, II. p. aiQ.
2 Ibid., II, p. 174.

.17

SRI AUKOBINUO

one cannot withhold admiration from a literary
craftsman who achieves lines like :

Only man's soul looks out with luminous eyes

Upon the worlds inimitably wise ^

The sweet fair girl-wife broken with bridal bliss . . . . ®
Seven griefs arc as seven daggers in my heart . . . . ®

In the dim-glinting womb and luminous murk. . . . '
Thorns are her nature, but her face the rose

The Century of Life, like most didactic poetry,
appeals to the head rather than to the heart ; but
there are not wanting occasional flashes that pene-
trate much deeper.

II

Sri Aurobindo's rendering of MeghaduUi interza
rima metre must have been a truly wonderful and
delightful poem ; it is, however, a great pity that,
along with many other original poems and transla-
tions, it is now wholly lost to us.® Some of the
renderings from Chundidas and other Vaishnav
poets have fortunately survived. Radha's Com-
plaint in Absence and Radha’s Appeal are both poems
first, and adaptations only afterwards. However it

I. Collected Poems and Plays, 11, p. 2x8.
3. Ibid., n, p. iSg.

3. Ibid., 11, p, 194.

4. Ibid., n, p. 21 1,

j. Ibid., n, p. 217,

6 . Ibid,, 1, Publisher's Note.

■^8

■IKANSLA'liONS

derives its primary inspiration, the following stanza
has the authentic ring and chime of poetry, and that
is all that matters :

O heart, my heart, a heavy pain is thine 1
What land is that where none doth know
Love’s cruel name nor any word of sin ?

My heart, there let us god

It is Love’s eternal faltering-unfaltering language ;
it is as old as, or older than, the hills and the sea
and the sky ; and it is the more poetic for that very
reason. What has poetry to do with “ new ”
things like the electric dynamo or the refrigerator
or the latest vacuum cleaner ? Humanity — Man,
God and Nature — these alone are the primal stuff
of all poetry, and that is why we cannot help im-
mediately responding to a stanza like :

Therefore to this sweet sanctuary I brought
My chilled and shuddering thought.

Ah, suffer, sweet,

To thy most faultless feet
That I should cling unchid ; ah, spurn me not

In another poem. Appeal, the poet gives a fresh
rendering of the Shakespearian adage, " Youth’s,
a stuff will not endure :

Life is a bliss that cannot long abide,

But while thou livest, love. For love the sky
Was founded, earth unheaved from the deep cry

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 29.

2. Ibid,, I, p. 30.

3. Twelfth Night, II, 3. 1 . 54.

■59

SKI AUROBINDO

Of waters, and by love is sweetly tied
The golden cordage of our youth and pride. ^

In yet another poem, Karma, a pretty conceit is
rendered with emotion ; since Krishna will not come
to Raclha, she will now leap into the ocean and die —

Die and be reborn to life again
As Nanda’s son, the joy of Braja's girls,

And I will make thee Radha then,

A laughing child's face set with lovely curls.

Then I will love thee and then leave

Then shalt thou know the billerness of love “

That these ver.ses have been inspired by tire original
Bengali of Chundidas or of some other poet does
not make them any the less charming as English
poetry.

As a translator, Sri Aurobindo holds the healthy,
but rather unorthodox, view that a translation need
not be quite literal and dully flat. As he once wrote
to Dilip Kumar Roy, “ a translator is not neces-
sarily bound to the original he chooses ; he can
make his own poem out of it, if he likes, and that is
what is generally done.”-^ Literal translations may
have their own dubious value as cribs for students
over whom hangs the spectre of an imminent
■examination ; but translations like Chapman’s Homer,
Dryden’s Virgil, Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam and

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 133.

2. Ibid., 1 , p. 132.

3. Quoted in Anami, p. 245.

60

IKANSLAllONS

Binyon’s Dante are all equally, if not quite to an
equal extent, poems by right and virtue of their
finished perfection and but implicitly honour their
originals ; likewise, the great translator — a Chap-
man, a Pope, a Fitzgerald, a Romesh Ghunder, a
Binyon — is more a partner than a slave, and he
gives us as much of himself as of the original, and
the two in such harmonious combination that it is
ever a puerile task to attempt to dissociate one from
the other ; this, too, is the true measure of Sri
Aurobindo as a translator, and hence his many
renderings from Bengali and Sanskrit are as a rule
poems in their own right. Indeed, some of these
so-called translations are so good and so feast the
ear and chasten the mind that they may more
appropriately be described rather as transfigurations
in terms of colour, sound and inwrought imagery.

Ill

The Songs of the Sea^ is a magnificent sequence
of forty pieces composed in a variety of rhythmical
patterns. As translations th^y are said to be very
close to the originals ; but they are also a continuum
of poetic iridescence ; they are as much Aurobindo
Ghose as they are Chittaranjan Das, and indubitable

I, The renderings from C. R. Das's Sagar Sangtt were done, not m
Baroda, but many years later in Pondicherry at the author’s request ;
but, along with Sri Aurobmdo’s other translations. The Songs of the Sea
IS conveniently considered in this Chapter.

6t

SKI AUROBINUO

poetry in any case. For instance, what can be more
richly conceived or more finely expressed than the
following passages picked at random from The Songs
of the Sea :

0 thou unhoped-for elusive wonder of the skies,

Stand .still one moment 1 T will lead thee and bind
With music to the chambers of my mind.

Behold how calm today this sea before me lies

And quivering with what tremulous heart of dreams
In the pale glimmer of the faint moonbeams.

If thou at last art come indeed, O mystery, slay
Woven by song into my heart-beats from this day ^

Behold, the perfect-gloried dawn has come
Far-floating from eternity her home.

Her limbs are clad in silver light of dreams,

Fler brilliant influence on the water streams,

And in that argent flood to one white theme

Are gathering all the hues and threads of dream

1 sit upon thy hither shore, O main,

My gaze is on thy face. Yet sleep, O sleep I
My heart is trembling with a soundless strain,

My soul is watching by thy slumber deep

I

Thy huge rebuke shook all my nature, all
The narrow coasts of thought sank crumbling in.

Collapsed that play-room and that lamp was quenched.

I stood in Ocean's thundens washed and drenched *

X. Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. 249.

2. Ibid., II, p. 252.

3. Ibid., II, p, 262.

4. Ibid., II, p. 269,

6 '’

IxlANSLAllONS

This shore and that shore, — I am tired, they pall.

Where thou art shoreless, take me from it all ... .

I am mad for thee, O king of mysteries ....

Pilot eternal, friend unknown embraced,

O, take me to thy shoreless self at last.^

Through extracts, however numerous, it is impos-
sible to convey an adequate idea of the cumulative
effect that these extraordinary “ Songs of the Sea
produce on the receptive ear ; the whole sequence
should be considered one and indivisible, it is to be
interpreted as the recordation of the cry of the Jiva
for final union with the hourly experienced, yet
still unapprehended, sublimity and mystery of the
Universe. The sea is visualized, no doubt, in
terms of colour, sound and rhythm ; but the sea is
not simply the Bay of Bengal or the Indian Ocean,
but something much more elemental and much more
ethereal as well. As it is to Ellidda in Ibsen's The
Lady from the Sea, to Chittaranjan and to Sri
Aurobindo the sea is a veritable symbol of romance,
a baffling concretion of multifoliate Nature, of its
reserves of power no less than its undying mystery.
The arts of echo and refrain, of assonance and
dissonance, of variation in movement through the
adroit placing of polysyllabic words like " solitude
of shoreless sound ” or “ myriad serpents of infi-
nitude ” to give added \yeight and momentum to
the verse, all these are mobilized, controlled and

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 273.
6;?

SKI AUKOBINUO

tonvertecl into an abiding expiession of the bottom-
less depth and mystery as also of the ineluctable and
" mefftigable ” hire and fascination of the sea.

The student of English poetry sometimes
wonders if the qualities that we associate with
Byron’s apostrophe to the Ocean in Childe Harold
and with Shelley’s WesL Wind can ever be
found subsisting in harmony in the same poem ;
one cannot quite imagine how the thing could be
done— -until one reads Sri Aurobindo’s poetic se-
quence, The Songs of the Sen . The sea is successfully
evoked in a hundred and one different ways — it is
the “ unhoped-for elusive wonder of the skies,” it is
the " Infinite Voice,” it is the ” minstrel of infinity,”
it is the ” shoreless main,” it is the '* great mad sea,”
it is the ” illimitable,” it is the ” mighty One,” and
it is the ” king of mysteries”; the poet thus ap-
proaches the sea as a friend, as a lover, as a loyal
subject, as a devotee, as a shadow that must ever
pursue the object, as a waif that would return to the
bosom of the mother ; and the music with its subtle
undulations of dissolving sweetness fuses at last
poet and reader and subject into a closed universe
of harmony and bliss.

The Songs of the Sea, then, are only superficially
Nature poems ; more particularly, they are impas-
sioned lyrics, with a core of purposeful spirituality
in them that places the sequence in a category apart,
not very far from mystical poetry.

64

IKANSLATIONS

IV

Of Sri Aurobindo’s translations, only one other
major work remains to be considered — The Hero and
the Nymph. It was done, so we learn from Mr.
Nolini Kanta Gupta, in Baroda in the early years of
the present century.^ In attempting to render
VikramoTvasie into English verse, Sri Aurobindo
successfully braved a much more difficult task than
when he translated Ghundidas or Bhartrihari or
even Chittaranjan. A play of Kalidasa’s, romantic,
tantalizing, and strangely and attractively remote
from everyday experience, Vikramorvasie cannot
easily be coaxed into changing her robes ; but Sri
Aurobindo has performed the feat, and we have
in result The Hero and the Nymph. Like Laurence
Binyon’s Sahuntala, Sri Aurobindo’s The Hero and
the Nymph also fairly reproduces the fever and the
flavour of the original and succeeds in making
Kalidasa himself feel at home in an alien garb.

The story is briefly told : Pururavas, the van-
quisher of the Titans, is smitten with love for
Urvasie, a beautiful nymph ; Pururavas is already
married, and there are the inevitable complications ;
and, of course, there is a divinity that shapes our
ends and all’s well that ends well ! We visit arbours
and are ravished by the moonlight ; we scale great
mountain heights, we visit Saint Bharat’s hermitage

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, Publisher s Note.

SRI AUROBINDO

in heaven itself, we watch the adorations, the fertile
tears, the queer antics, and the blissful ecstasies of
Pururavas and Urvasie. It is the quintessence of
romance ; and Sri Aurobindo has succeeded in
capturing and communicating much of the elusive
fascination of the original to English readers,

The motif of the play is no more characteristically
Elindu than it is Plellcnic ; and Sri Aurobindo, with
his profound intimacy with both cultures, has given
us a rendering which can be described as a true
work of art. Description, dialogue, distraction,
jealousy, fervour, pleasantry, humour, all arc here ;
and blank verse, as handled by Sri Aurobindo, is
seen to be an elastic enough instrument for the
expression of all these vagaries and varieties of
emotion and passion. One may laugh at, or with,
Manavaka the Brahmin jester and the King’s com-
panion, whose jokes and deepest observations alike
originate from his inveterate gluttony. He is rather
disagreeably loud when he plays the clown in prose :

“ Houp ! Houp ! I feel like a Brahmin who
has had an invitation to dinner ; he thinks dinner,
talks dinner, looks dinner, his very sneeze has
the music of the dinner-bell in it.”-*-
But elsewhere Manavaka’s humour is more delight-
fully capricious and has the added charm of being
expressed in the nervous rhythms of ordinary

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. i6.
66

TRANSLATIONS

speech ;

Yes, I too when I cannot get sweet venison
And hunger for it, often beguile my belly
With celebrating all its savoury joys i

Why, what is there in Heaven to pine for ? There
You do not eat, you do not drink, only
Stare like so many fishes in a low
With wide unblinking eyes.^

But the play’s real merit centres in the exquisite
love drama, of which Pururavas and Urvasie are the
protagonists. They find and lose and lose and find
themselves over and over again, and these alterna-
tions determine the general rhythm of the play.
Pururavas, coming upon Urvasie as she stands,
her eyes closed in terror, supported on the right
arm of Ghitralekha," thus gallantly addresses her :

O thou too lovely !

Recall thy soul. The enemies of Heaven
Can injure thee no more ; that danger’s over.

The Thunderer’s puissance still pervades the worlds.

O then uplift these long and lustrous eyes
Like sapphire lilies in a pool where dawn
Comes smiling.'’

How deftly is the transition achieved from the terrific
energy of the Thunderer’s puissance to the ” long
lustrous eyes ” of the celestial nymph !

1. Collected Poem': and Plays, II, p. 48.

2. Ibid., II, p. 58.

3. }bid., II, p. 6.

67

SRI AUROUlNDO

The same command over sound values in English
and the dynamics of blank verse is revealed in many
another passage as well, where the verse luxuriates
into arabesque and gives us descriptions like these :

'Tis noon. The tired
And heated peacock sinks to chill delight
Of water in the Irce-eircircling channel,

The bee divides a crimson bud and creeps
Into its womb ; there merged and safe from lire.

He’s lurking. The duck too leaves her blazing pool
And shelters in cold lilies on the bank.

And in yon summer-house weary of heat
The parrot from his cage for water cries ^

How beautifully twilight sits and dreams
Upon these palace walls ! The peacocks now
Sit on their perches, drowsed with sleep and night.
Like figures hewn in stone. And on the roof
The fluttering pigeons with their pallid wings
Mislead the eye, disguised as rings of smoke
That from the window-ways have floated out
Into the evening ^

The Illy of the night

Needs not to guess it is the moon’s cool touch.

She starts not to the sunbeam.*

Noon or twilight or night, Nature yields her charms
to the poet, and Sri Aurobindo paints them memor-
ably with his English brush 1

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 39.
a. Ibid,, II, p. 43.

3. Ibid., U, p. 56,

3 *

68

ixCANbLA'llONS

Later still, Pururavas strings together many
pathetic fallacies and felicities in description into
one long, nervous, and poetically effective blank verse
symphony. Exclamation, distraction, surprise, re-
miniscence, bitter regrets, hopes that seem hopeless,
apostrophes, accusations, piercing shrieks, sedate
ruminations, all these are thrown seemingly helter-
skelter into one prolonged effusion of truly moving
poetry. Sri Aurobindo deftly manages the shifting
rhythms and one not merely feels and hears but
literally sees the whole action unrolling before one’s
eyes. Simply as a technical achievement, these ten
pages of blank verse must be rated very high indeed.
Pururavas hurries forward, hoping to reach the
hands of Urvasie ; he is mistaken —

Me miserable I This was
No anklets’ cry embraceable with hands,

But moan of swans who seeing the great wet sky
Grow passionate for Himaloy's distant tarns.

Well, be it so. But ere in far desire

They leap up from this pool, I well might learn

Tidings from them of Urvasie.^

In Venkatanatha’s Hamsa Sandesa, Rama accosts a
swan and (after the manner of the Yaksha in Megha-
duta) sends through her a message to Sita. It is no
use dismissing such things as conceits or as pathetic
fallacies ; in expert hands they prove rather the very
stuff of poetry. Pururavas thus addresses in turn

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 68.

69

SRi AuKOBiMiJU

the swan, the chocrobacque “ all saffron and ver-
milion,” the “ lotus- wooing bee,” the ” rut-dripping
elephant he is attracted specially to the elephant :

More to thee I stand
Attracted, elephant, as like with like.

Sovereign of sovereigns is my title, thou
Art monarch of the kingly elephants.

And this wide freedom of thy fragrant rut
Interminable imitates my own
Vast liberality to suppliant men,

I Regally ; thou hast in all the herd this mate,

I among loveliest women Urvasie.

In all things art thou like me ; only I pray,

O friend, that thou mayest never know the pang.

The loss.^

Pururavas cannot see Urvasie still ; the place is too
dark ; there are no streaks of lightning either — ^the
stupendous cloud itself

Is widowed of the lightning through my sin.^

Pururavas will not lose hope yet ; he will question
the ” huge pile of scaling crags he will frantically
clutch at the accents of the Echo — and he falls
down in a swoon screaming out to the crags and
the mountain glens the name of his beloved. And
so we watch, as does Urvasie herself, the incredible
vicissitudes of her lover's agony till at last, almost
as exhausted as is Pururavas himself, we are relieved
to know that the lovers are re-united indeed ; and

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 71.
3. Ibid., II, p. 71.

70

'I'RANSLATIONS

we can even catch a glimpse of the celestial nymph
as her delighted lover accosts her as follows :

Thus stand a while. O fairest,

Thy face suffused with crimson from this gem
Above thee pouring wide its fire and splendour.

Has all the beauty of a lotus reddening
In early sunlight.^

At Sri Aurobindo’s magic touch, Kalidasa’s superb
figures are rekindled into a flame of beauty and in
consequence his immortal play has acquired almost
a fresh habitation and name in the realm of English
poetry.

t, Collected Poem and Plays, II, p. 77-

71

CHAPTER FIVE

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POETRY

I

Even before Sri Aurobindo started on his
English version of Kalidasa’s Vikramorvasie, he had
been sufficiently captivated by the theme to produce
a long narrative poem on the subject. Urvasie was
first published in Barodain 1896 ; it thus belongs to
the period of Sri Aurobindo’s first years in Baroda.
It is divided into four Cantos and its length is
roughly 1,500 lines.

The story of Urvasie is substantially Kalidasa’s
still ; but it is here rendered as a metrical romance
in highly flexible blank verse. Admirably propor-
tioned, Urvasie is interspersed with many passages
that evoke colour and sound with a sure and brilliant
artistry ; and not seldom the words move like winged
squadrons, radiating a nervous potency of suggestion
romantic to the marrow.

Sri Aurobindo, desiring to treat the story of
Pururavas and Urvasie on an epic scale and desiring,
further, to underline its national significance, has
made certain departures from the purely dramatic
presentation of the theme in Kalidasa’s play. Pur-
uravas and Urvasie have longed for each other, they

72

NARkATIVE AND DRAkAtlG POETRY

have at last come together ; she is in his arms,
“ clinging and shuddering”:

She, o’erborne,

Panting, with inarticulate murmurs lay.

Like a slim tree half seen through driving hail.

Her naked arms clasping his neck, her cheek
And golden throat averted, and wide trouble
In her large eyes bewildered with their bliss.

Amid her wind-blown hair their faces met.

With her sweet limbs all his, feeling her breasts
Tumultuous up against his beating heart,

He kissed the glorious mouth of heaven’s desire.

So clung they as two shipwrecked in a surge. ^

Having won Urvasie, Pururavas can never have
too much of her ; they form, as it were, a closed
universe where sensuous pleasure is the hourly law :

But in their fortunate heavens the high gods

Dwelt infelicitous, losing the old

Rapture inexplicable and thrill beneath

Their ancient fcalm. Therefore not long enduring,

They in colossal coundl marble, said

To that bright sister whom she had loved best,

“ Menaca !" crying " how long shall one man
Divide from heaven its most perfect bliss ?

Go down and bring her back, our bright one back.
And we shall love again our luminous halls ”.®

Urvasie has now to return to heaven, and Pururavas
is disconsolate ; he leaves his kingdom, he seeks his

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. sg.

2. Ibid., I, p. 63,

7 .^

SKi AUUOiilNDU

beloved on hill and dale and glen and grotto, till at
length he meets Luxmie, the “ patroness of Arya-
sthan.” He tells her the name of his "termless
wide desire and “ like a viol ” she returns this
prophetic reply :

Sprung of the moon, thy grandsire's fault m thee
Yet lives ; but since thy love is singly great,

Doubtless thou shalt possess thy whole desire.

Yet hast thou maimed the future and discrowned
The Aryan people ; for though Ha's sons,

In Hustina, the city of elephants,

And Indrapiusta, futuie towns, shall rule
Drawing my peoples to one sceptre, at last
Theii power by excess of beauty falls, —

Thy sin, Puiuiavas — of beauty and love :

And this the land divine to impure grasp
Yields of barbarians from the outer shores.^

Notwithstanding the unnatural inversion in the
last two lines, the speech embodies a core of his-
torical truth and eloquently utters a note of prophetic
warning, as pertinent to-day as it was when Purur-
avas faced the austere goddess and patroness of
Aryasthan.

Of course, Pururavas goes his own way and finds
his felicity in the arms of Urvasie ; but-—

far below through silent mighty space
The green and strenuous earth abandoned rolled.®

He had won a sort of personal salvation, no doubt ;

I. Collecled Poents and Playi, I, p. 77.
2 Ibid,, I, p. 82.

74

NARKA'1 IVE AND DRAMATIC POETRY

but even he, " bright soul,” had failed to rise to
the heights of the opportunity presented to him ;
he had failed India, he had failed humanity ; ” but
God blames not nor punishes !”

Impartially he deals

To every strenuous spirit its chosen reward.^

Apart from the underlying message, Urvasic has
all the usual felicities in diction and style associated
with epic poetry. Expanded similes, Nature des-
criptions, arrays of polysyllabic proper names,
eloquent speeches, all these are true to type ; and
the whole action hinges upon a Temptation, a
temptation to which the hero succumbs ; it is there-
fore not inappropriate to call Urvasie aiii epic or an
epyllion. If the Temptation gives it its sense of
unity and its wide human interest, the strings of
proper names and the elaborate similes make the
poem aesthetically beautiful. For instance, here
have we no more than a catalogue of names, and
yet the result is charming poetry :

So danced they numberless as dew-drops gleam,
Menaca, Misracayshie, Mullica,

Rumbha, Nelabha, Sheia, Nolinie,

Lolita, Lavonya and Tilottama, —

Many delightful names ^

Again, doesn’t an expanded simile like the following
reproduce, and more than reproduce, the apposite-

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 8o.
3. Ibid., 1, p. 40.

75

SRI AUROBIMDO

ness as well as the elaboration of typical epic similes :

As when a child falls asleep unawares
At a closed window on a stormy day,

Looking into the weary rain, and long
Sleeps, and wakes quietly into a life
Of ancient moonlight, first the thoughtfulness
Of that felicitous world to which the soul
Is visitor in sleep, keeps her sublime
Discurtained eyes ; human dismay comes next.

Slowly ; last, sudden, they brighten, and grow wide
With recognition of an altered world,

Delighted : so woke Urvasie to love.^

Urvasie is the work of a young man ; it has
youth’s boldness, idealism, intuition of romantic
imagery, and feeling for the sheer beauty of language.
It is Sri Aurobindo’s Endymion ; • but an Endymion
transferred, by sleight of hand, to Aryasthan and
rendered in terms of immemorial Hindu thought.

II

Urvasie was followed by another narrative poem,
Love and Death. Though it was composed in the
closing years of the last century, it was not published
till 1921. Somewhat shorter than the earlier poem,
Love and Death sweeps on its course with the same
intensity of emotion and similar richness of music.
The Hellenic story of Orpheus and Eurydice is
almost transformed into a magic tale of love and

I. Collected Poems and Plays, 1 , pp. 45-6.

76

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POETRY

death and immortality, typically Hindu in setting,
sentiments and language.

Here is the story : Ruru, Sage Bhrigu’s grand-
son, loves Priyumvada, daughter of Menaca the
nymph and the Gandharva King ; it is a beautiful
idyll that is pictured in these lines :

Fresh-chceked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada
Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom
To love, to Ruru ; Ruru, a happy flood
Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled,

Blinded with his soul’s waves Priyumvada.

To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower,

To her all the world was filled with his embrace.^

Next follow two or three pages of almost the apo-
theosis of sensuous poetry ; Ruru and Priyumvada
are so very, very happy that he laughs towards the
sun and cries :

how good it is to live, to love I
Surely our joy shall never end, nor we
Grow old, but like bright rivers or pure winds
Sweetly continue, or revive with flowers,

Or live at least as long as senseless trees.*

But no ; Priyumvada is presently bitten by a snake
and sinks to the ground. The poor girl’s dying
speech is most touching :

And I have had so little
Of joy and the wild day and throbbing night.

Laughter, and tenderness, and strife and tears.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 85.

2. Jbid,, 1 , p, 88,

77

SRI AUROBINUO

I have not numbered half the brilliant birds
In one green forest, nor am familiar grown
With sunrise and the progress of the eves,

Nor have with plaintive cries of birds made friends,
Cuckoo and rainlark and love-speak-to-med

As yet unreconciled to the event, Priyuinvada
dies, and is borne away to " some distant greenness.”
Night descends upon Ruru and his soul is now
synonymous with “ the great silence”; he gives vent
to the edge of his desolate grief, and aimlessly
wanders in the forest ; he undergoes experiences
that both hold promises to his ear and break them
to his heart. He meets at last Kama, “ who makes
many worlds one fire,” and acquaints him with his
miserable predicament. The God of Love offers
Ruru a ray of hope ; he could proceed to the nether
world and redeem Priyumvada from ” immitigable
death ” — ^but only on one fearful condition ;

Life the pale ghost requires : with half thy life
Thou mayest protract the thread too early cut
Of that delightful spirit — half sweet life.

O Ruru, lo, thy frail precarious days,

And yet how sweet they are 1 simply to breathe
How warm and sweet i And ordinary things
How exquisite, thou then shalt learn when lost,

How luminous the daylight was, mere sleep
How soft and friendly clasping tired limbs.

And the deliciousness of common food.

And things indifferent thou then shalt want.

1. Collected Poem and Plays, I, pp. 89-90.

78

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POETRY

Regret rejected beauty, brightnesses
Bestowed in vain. Wilt thou yield up, O lover,

Half thy sweet portion of this light and gladness,

Thy little insufficient share, and vainly
Give to another

Of course, he will ; he journeys to the ocean and
exhorts her to split up her abysses to his mortal
tread ; she answers his prayer —

And like a living thing the huge sea trembled.

Then rose, calling, and filled the sight with waves.
Converging all its giant crests ; towards him
Innumerable waters loomed and heaven
Threatened. Horizon on horizon moved
Dreadfully swift ; then with a prone wide sound
All Ocean hollowing drew him swiftly in.

Curving with monstrous menace over him.

He down the gulf where the loud waves collapsed
Descending, saw with floating hair arise
The daughters of the sea in pale green light,

A million mystic breasts suddenly bare.

And came beneath the flood and stunned beheld
A mute stupendous march of waters race
To reach some viewless pit beneath the world.^

Thus Ruru reaches, though not without “ agony
of soul,” the “ grey waste ” of Patala. The nether
world is now described with excruciating vividness,
sharply reminding one of Milton’s vivification of
Hell in Paradise Lost or Dante’s conjuring up of
Inferno in The Divine Comedy. We meet the

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. loo.
3, Ibid., I, pp. 104-5.

79

oKl AUROBIMUO

incredible inhabitants of Patala and share Ruru's
poignant thoughts ; we pass on, an impossible
tourist in this “ Death's other kingdom we are
near the throne of Hades ; we hear muttered ex-
clamations and explanations ; we see the giant dogs,
four-eyed and mysterious, as they raise “ their
dreaded heads we hear at last the Great God
Yama, discoursing wisely on Love, and Youth, and
Age, and Immortality.

Once more a Temptation scene thrillingly
unfolds itself before our eyes. Pururavas would
give up his kingdom and all opportunity for un-
blemished service rather than live without Urvasie ;
Ruru would likewise give up the mature, " fruit-
bearing” years of his life in return for the life of
Priyumvada. Yama is as overwhelmed by regret
as is Goddess Luxmie at the failure of Pururavas
to live up to a great ideal. Neither Luxmie nor
Yama plays the role of a Tempter ; rather they place
the alternatives squarely before Pururavas and Ruru,
who are alike poised on the crest of the dread
predicament, ” Fixt Fate — ^Free Will ”!

In vain Yama tries to persuade Ruru to give up
Priyumvada. In vain he expatiates on the privileges
of old age :

Yet thou bethink thee, mortal.

Not as a tedious evil nor to be
Lightly rejected gave the gods old age,

But tranquil, but august, but making easy
The steep ascent to God. Therefore must Time
Still batter down the glory and form of youth

8o

NARRAiiVii AND DRAMATIC POETRY

And animal magnificent strong ease,

To warn the earthward man that he is spirit
Dallying with transience, nor by death he ends,

Nor to the dumb warm mother’s arms is bound,

But called unborn into the unborn skiesd

Ruru should not forget that (in Browning’s language)
“youth shows but half’’; he should not lightly
renounce the latter half of his life. On the contrary,
should he but live the full quota of his appointed
life, he would surely grow

divine with age,

A Rishi to whom infinity is close.

Rejoicing in green wood or musical shade
Or boundless mountain-top where most we feel
Wideness, not by small happy things disturbed,®

Ruru even catches the vision splendid, “ the dawn
of that mysterious Face and all the universe in
beauty merge ’’; and yet he will not accept the
promised Felicity ; he would give back, in Ivan
Karamazov’s pithy expression, “ the ticket ’’ — ^if
only Priyumvada could be restored to him ! Ruru
is now once again in the world of common sight
and sound, Priyumvada is alive and is lying by his
side :

For many moments comforting his soul
With all her jasmine body sun-ensnared
He fed his longing eyes. .....

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. in.
a. Ibid; I, p. 1 13.

81

SRl AUROBINDO

the earth breathed round them,

Glad of her children and the koil’s voice
Persisted in the morning of the world d

Love’s labour’s won ! But the victory is only a
defeat in disguise. Pururavas the Kshatriya failed ;
Ruru the Brahmin also has failed ; of either of them
it might be said, slightly modifying Goldsmith’s
lines on Burke :

Born for the universe, he narrowed up his mind.

And to himself gave what was meant for mankind.

No Satan, no Achitophel, no Manthara, no lago
tempted Pururavas or Ruru ; they were but betrayed
by what was false within. The Temptation was
enacted, in the last resort, only in the theatres of
their souls ; but it is the more intensely dramatic
and significant for that very reason !

Ill

The most amazing, perhaps, of Sri Aurobindo’s
early poetic compositions is the blank verse drama,
Perseus the Deliverer. According to Mr. Nolini
Kanta Gupta, this drama “ was written somewhere
between the end of the nineties and the first years
of the following decade.”^ It was first published
serially in 1907 in the columns of the weekly edition

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p, 115.
Ibid., I, Publisher’s Note.

narrative: and dramatic, poetry

of The Bandemataram and has been very recently
reprinted in the Collected Poems and Plays.

It required not a little of courage and self-
confidence on Sri Auroblndo’s part to embark
upon this adventure of rendering a hoary Greek
myth in the language of modern thought ; but, then,
nothing succeeds like success, and Sri Aurobindo
has certainly achieved something of a tour-de-force
that satisfies us as drama, as poetry, and also as an
imaginative presentation of the ideas of evolution
and progress.

Perseus, the heroic hero of ancient Hellas, is
portrayed in this play as a veritable hero indeed,
but a hero who inaugurates a forward movement in
the story of humanity as the result of a monumental
clash of mighty opposites ; in him we are made to
see “ the first promptings of the deeper and higher-
psychic and spiritual being which it is his (Man’s)
ultimate destiny to become,”^ The conflict in the
play is both individual and cosmic ; and the conflict
is waged in different ways and on different levels.
Cepheus, King of Syria, is pitted against Polydaon,
Priest of Poseidon ; Pallas Athene is pitted against
Poseidon, in other words, Wisdom is up against
brute Force ; one might almost say, the Devas are
waging a bitter war against the Asuras !

Sri Aurobindo thus conceives the conflict as
being somewhat in the nature of a Hegelian dialectic ;

6

I. Cnlledfitl Poems and Plays, I, p. 174.

83

SRI AUROBlNDO

man shall progress indeed, as he has already pro-
gressed so much along the corridors of the past,
but only if he is still prepared to brave and to ride
successfully on the crests and cusps, the checks and
counter- checks, that inevitably punctuate his life.
Evil and anarchy and seeming defeat cannot for ever
bar man’s onward march ; Pallas therefore hurls
this deathless challenge at Poseidon ;

Therefore I bid thee nol,

O azure strong Poseidon, to abate

Thy savage tumults : rather his march oppose,

For through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead. ^

According to Sri Aurobindo, the Heraclitan
maxim — " all is flux, nothing is stationary ” — ^is by
itself not very helpful or consoling ; what Heraclitus,
on the contrary, really tells us is just this : “ all
indeed comes into being according to strife, but
also all things come into being according to Reason,
kat erin but also kata ton logon,”^ It is this expanded
Heraclitan message that is given eloquent expression
to in the last lines of Sri Aurobindo’ s play :

Cassiopea : How can the immortal gods and Natuj-e change ?

Perseus : All alters m a world that is the same.

Man most must change who is a soul of Time ;

His gods too change and live in larger light.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p, 179.

2. Sri Aurobindo, HmachtU'., p. 62,

84

6 *

NARTlAii'Vji, AND DRAMATIC POETRY

Cepheus ; Then man too may arise to greater heights,

His being draw nearer to the gods ?

Perseus : Perhaps.

But the blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long i.s Time.

Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase :

The day shall come when men feel close and one.
Meanwhile one forward step is something gained,
Since little by little earth must open to heaven
Till her dim soul awakes into the Light. ^

Here can be discovered the germs of the thought
that was later to grow in volume and substance
and fill the ample halls and quadrangles of The Life
Divine.

” All alters in a world that is the same !” In
other words, there is a fact of Becoming as well as a
fact of Being ; “ to deny one or the other is easy ;
to recognize the facts of consciousness and find
out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom."®
A preliminary, poetic gleam of this wisdom lights
up and shows the significance of the struggle between
Perseus and the sea-monster ; its full implications
were to be worked out in the fullness of time when
Sri Aurobindo would make his readers realize that
"the principle of the process of evolution is a
foundation, from that foundation an ascent, in that
ascent a reversal of consciousness and, from the
greater height and wideness gained, an action of

1 . Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 306.

2. The Life Divine (References are lo the First ndition), I, p. riq.

SRI AUROBlNDO

change and new integration of the whole nature.”'^

And yet, for all its “ message " or indeed because
of its perennial urgency, Perseus the Deliverer is
essentially a play of action, full of the rush and
tumult of both a human and a cosmic conflict, and
it is therefore breathlessly interesting as sheer
drama. The dialogues are poetically intense and
yet but rarely sound unnatural ; the prose bits are
full of pep and are not seldom drenched in indecor-
ous gaiety ; but Sri Aurobindo’s art excels itself in
the great blank verse passages which accurately
evoke either the terrible plight of an Andromeda
chained to the cliff or the insane and inflated blood-
lust of a Polydaon or yet the radiant serenity, the
confident strength and the prophetic intensity of a
Perseus. Poetic drama in English is not dead ;
T. S. Eliot and Sri Aurobindo have now shown
that serious drama can be written in verse even
to-day.

In Perseus the Deliverer we have a diverting
variety of characters, and they are most of them
very carefully differentiated. Besides the major
characters, who have been drawn on a heroic
scale, we have interesting types and comic creations
as well. Many interests and many men are shown
as working together for the downfall of the Syrian
King and his family ; but the popular leader and
demagogue, Therops, is himself frightened by the

I. The Life Divine, II, p. 656.

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POEl'RV

new tyrants that his own oratory has placed in
power. He is ready to agree with Dercetes, the
Syrian Captain, when he says ;

Therops, ‘twould be a nightmare,

The rule of that fierce priest and fiercer rabble.'^

Cireas, the outspoken and humorous servant in the
temple of Poseidon, makes the appropriate comment
on Therops, the “ crowd-compeller ” and “ eloquent
Zeus of the market-place

“ This it is to be an orator ! We shall hear
him haranguing the people next market-day on
fidelity to princes and the divine right of queens
to have favourites.”^

Likewise, the abject and wretchedly selfish Baby-
lonian merchant, Smerdas, is very convincingly
portrayed and contrasted with Tyrnaus, another
merchant from Babylon.

The ” heroic ” characters, Perseus, Cassiopea,
Queen of Syria, her daughter Andromeda, her son
lolaus, the opportunist Phineas, King of Tyre, all
are vividly and boldly delineated. But Polydaon,
Priest of Poseidon, easily dominates the play, which
may almost be called the Tragedy of Polydaon. As
in Shylock’s character, in Polydaon’s also one can
discover both ludicrous and tragic lineaments. For
a brief spell, Polydaon is an instrument of destiny ;
he is puffed up, he is immense in his own and in

1. Collected Poem and Plays, I, p. 284.

2. Ibid., I, p. 296.

87

SRi AUROBINDO

his people’s eyes ; he is an engine of evil, gloating
over his mad thirst for blood and lust for power ;
he will revel in death and destruction ; he will make
crimson rivers irrigate Syria’s gardens ; he will hll
them with heads instead of lilacs ; his destiny is —
so he imagines — ^to will what he desires and to
achieve what he wills. Polydaon is certainly other
than human when, as the “ madness gains upon
him,” he gesticulates wildly and soliloquizes as
follows :

The world shall long recall King Polydaon.

I will paint Syria gloriously with blood.

Hundreds shall daily die to incarnadine
The streets of my city and my palace floors,

For I would walk in redness. I’ll plant my gardens
With heads instead of lilacs. Hecatombs
Of men shall groan their hearts out for my pleasure
In crimson rivers

Nobles and slaves, men, matrons, boys and virgins
At matins and at vespers shall be slain
To me in ray magnificent high temple

Beside my thunderous Ocean

I am athirst, magnificently athirst,

And for a red and godlike wine

I am not Polydaon,

I am a god, a mighty dreadul god.

The multitudinous mover in the sea.

The shaker of the earth : I am Poseidon
And I will walk in three tremendous paces
Climbing the mountains with my clamorous waters
And see my dogs eat up Andromeda

88

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POETRY

Sit’st thou, my elder brother, cliarioted
In clouds ? Look down, O brother Zeus, and see
My actions ! they merit thy immortal gazed

But Polydaon presently meets more than his match
when Perseus — “the mighty son of Zeus and Danae’’
—confronts him and meets his challenge. Polydaon
is made to realize his failure — Poseidon’s failure ;
his vision is clouded, he is a prey to conflicting
spasms of thought ; but he dimly visualizes the new
“ brilliant god,’’ the new Poseidon, Olympian and
Greek, who is to replace the terrible old-Mediter-
ranean god of the sea. Polydaon supplicates to
Perseus and falls back dead. It is now left to
Perseus — who is “ divine-human ’’ throughout — ^to
sum up Polydaon’ s twisted career, incidentally
describing also, with a peculiar force and accuracy,
some of the seeming supermen-dictators of our own
times :

This man for a few hours became the vessel
Of an. occult and formidable Force
And through his form it did fierce terrible things
Unhuman : but his small and gloomy mind
And impure dark heart could not contahi the Force.

It turned in him to madness and demoniac

Huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him

Leaving the broken incapable instrument.

And all its might was spilt from his body. Better
To be a common man mid common men
And live an unaspiring mortal life

I, Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 266-7.

89

SKI ALIKOJilNUO

Than call into oneself a Titan strength
Too dire and mighty for its human frame,

That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world,

Then breaks its user.-*-

That surely is one of the peaks of divination in the
whole body of Sri Aurobindo’s poetry !

There are many more passages in the play which
have a relevance to us here and now, and could be
quoted here if space permitted ; and, indeed, the
play is full of overtones and undertones to which
it is not at all possible to do justice now. Hellenic
myth and Renaissance values, poetic symbolism
and Aryan wisdom, romance, humour, comedy,
satire, all are here thrown into the retort and shaken
into a compound. To conclude in Sri Aurobindo’s
own words ;

“ Time there is more than Einsteinian in its
relativity, the creative imagination is its sole
disposer and arranger ; fantasy reigns sovereign ;
the names of ancient countries and peoples are
brought in only as fringes of a decorative back-
ground ; anachronisms romp in wherever they
can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations
from all climes and epochs mingle ; myth, romance
and realism make up a single whole. For here
the stage is the human mind of all times.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, 1 , pp. 290-1.
2 Ibid,, I, pp. 173-4.

QO

CHAPTER SIX

MISCELLANEOUS POETRY
I

Between 1895 and 1908, Sri Aurobindo compos-
ed, in addition to Urvasie, Love and Death and
Perseus the Deliverer, a number of shorter poems
also, generally inspired by his growing philosophical
and political preoccupations. Of these, Vidula was
“ a free poetic paraphrase” of four adhyayas in the
Udyog-parva of the Mahabharata, and it appeared
originally under the title “ The Mother to Her Son ”
in the weekly edition of The Bandemaiaram in June
1907 ; Baji Prabhou, a historical poem of action,
although composed a little earlier, appeared serially
in the Weekly paper. The Karmayogin, only in 1910.
These two poems were thus conceived and written
during the first years of Sri Aurobindo's political
action in Calcutta ; but they are conveniently
discussed in this chapter, since they undoubtedly
gain in sigirificance when considered in close rela-
tion with Urvasie, Love and Death and Perseus the
Deliverer.

On the other hand, the philosophical poems
written between 1895 and 1908 appeared only in
1915, under the title Ahana and Other Poems. The

91

bRt AUROBINDO

title piece, Ahana, has since been “ enlarged and
recast ” and hence in its present form it properly
belongs to a later period of Sri Aurobindo’s career ;
it can therefore be more profitably studied in a
subsequent chapter along with Sri Aurobindo’s
Nine Poems, Six Poems, and Transformation and
Other Poems.

II

Baji Prabhou is a story of Maratha heroism and
is told with becoming dignity and force, its rhythm
and language being of a piece with its sanguinary
theme. Sri Aurobindo will not give us a moment’s
respite, but fairly plunges — in medias res — ^into the
heart of the bloody conflict.

After fighting a disastrous battle, Shivaji is in
hot retreat, with the enemy in close pursuit :

At last they reached a tiger-throated gorge
Upon the way to Raigurh. Narrowing there
The hills draw close, and their forbidding cliffs
Threaten the prone incline.^

Shivaji, in dire extremity, summons Baji Prabhou
and entrusts him with the defence of that crucial
gorge. Baji accepts the charge with this eloquent
asseveration of his faith :

not in this living net

Of flesh and nerve, nor in the flickering mind

I. Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. loa,

92

MISCELLANEOUS POETRY

Js a man’s manhood seated. God within
Rules us, who in the Brahmin and the dog
Gan, if He will, show equal godhead. Not
By men is mightiness achieved ; Baji
Or Malsure is but a name, a robe,

And covers One alone. We but employ
Bhavani’s strength, who in an arm of flesh
Is mighty as in the thunder and the storm. ^

Shivaji goes back to Raigurh to bring reinforce-
ments, leaving Baji and his fifty men to guard the
pass. Presently the enemy is sighted in the dis-
tance—

a mingled mass,

Pathan and Mogul and the Rajput clans.

All clamorous with the brazen throats of war
And spitting smoke and fire.®

The determined group of defensive Marathas
hurls back wave upon wave of enemy detachments ;
and still they come :

They came, they died ; still on the previous dead
New dead fell thickening. Yet by paces slow
The lines advanced with labour infinite
And merciless expense of valiant men.®

Sri Aurobindo describes the vicissitudes of this
modern Thermopylte with remorseless particularity.
The Pathan infantry, "a formidable array’'; the
“ hero sons ” of Rajasthan, " playmate of death

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 104.

2. Ibid., II, p. 105.

3. Ibid,, II, p. 106.

93

SRI AUROBlNUO

the chivalrous sons of Agra ; they all conic — one
horde after another — with the stern determination
to force the pass, regardless of expense ; and so —

the fatal gorge

filled with the clamour of the close-locked light.
Sword rang on sword, the slogan shout, the cry
Of guns, the his-s of bullets filled the air,

And murderous -strife heaped up the scanty space,
Rajput and strong Mahratta breathing hard
In desperate battle.^

The horror — and the pity — of it all ! And so the
narrative proceeds, with an inhuman precipitancy,
to the recordation of the final deathless scene.
Numbers tell at last ; Baji’s bullets fail, all his store
of shot and powder is exhausted. Baji exhorts his
brave men to make iron of their souls and fight on
still, with the firm faith that Bhavani will give them
her own strength and sword, and secure victory in
the end.

While the afternoon mellows into evening, Baji's
men continue to fight with fanatic courage and
desperate determination against “ Agra’s chivalry
glancing with gold the Maratha mountaineers
prove ultimately more than a match for the city-
dwellers of Agra :

So fought they for a while ; then suddenly
Upon the Prabhou all the Goddess came.

Loud like a lion hungry on the hills
He shouted, and his stature seemed to increase

I, Collected Poems and Plays, 11, p, loS.

94

MISCELLANEOUS POETRY

Striding upon the foe

The relics of the murderous strife remained,

Corpses and jewels, broidery and goldd

But the enemy would not accept defeat ; and the
fierce conflict was resumed with a deadlier ferocity.
A sword now found out Baji’s shoulder, " sharp a
Moghul lance ran grinding through his arm.”^

Baji is mortally wounded, and yet is he hut
broken — not bent. The battle rages as wild as ever,
Baji’s fifty men are reduced to fifteen ; not minding
his own wound, Baji charges against the enemy for
the last time, “ like a bull with lowered horns that
runs ”... .but already Shivaji is back with a for-
midable force and the Raigurh trumpets fill the air
and the Raigurh lances glisten in the ” glory of the
sinking sun.” Baji has indeed saved the situation,
but he himself sinks to the ground :

Quenched was the fiery gaze, nerveless the arm :

Baji lay dead in the unconquered gorge.®

Written in expressive, nervous and deeply
moving blank verse, Baji Prabhou is a very good
heroic poem ; it arrestingly opens with this unforget-
table description of midday :

A noon of Deccan with its tyrant glare
Oppre.ssed the earth ; the hills stood deep in haze,

1. Collected Poms ami Plays, n, p, iiz,

2. Ibid., II, p. 113.

3. Ibid., II, p. 114.

9 *:

SRjt AUKOBINDO

And sweltering athirst the fields glared up
Longing for water in the courses parched
Of streams long deadd

It closes at the moment when defeat is turned into
victory and Baji Prabhou becomes, by the very act
of losing his life, an heir to immortality. The
poem is thus rich in tragedy that both ennobles and
exalts the subject.

In Sri Aurobindo, Baji Prabhou has indeed
found a minstrel worthy of his imperishable sacri-
fice ; but the poet has wisely refrained from dimin-
ishing either the stature or the heroism of Baji
Prabhou's antagonists ; Pathan, or Rajput, or Moghul,
the enemy is brave, even as the Maratha is ; but
Baji out-tops them all ! Sri Aurobindo seems to
say — though he does not say it in so many words — '
that whoever would save his soul must be prepared
first to lose his life for a worthy cause ; sacrifice
offered at the altar of a noble ideal is alone the true
gateway to the soul’s immortality and freedom.
By dying, Baji Prabhou died not ; he lives, and will
live for ever in men's memories and bosoms. A
country that would redeem itself needs heroes of
the stamp of Baji Prabhou ; and was it not the duty
and the privilege of Indians to prove worthy of such
heroes, — ^heroes who could live for a great ideal and
also die for it ?

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p, loi,

96

MISLjiLLANEOUS poetry

III

In Baji Prahhou, Sri Aurobindo transfigured a
historical episode into a narrative poem — a poem
that has already elected itself to an honourable place
among the heroic poems in the English language—
a poem that is both meritorious as poetry and effec-
tive as a political sermon ; in Vidula, on the other
hand, Sri Aurobindo deftly made a mere Maha-
bharata tale, — an old, old story, — acquire a peculiar
contemporaneous urgency.

Vidula originally appeared under the title, “ The
Mother to Her Son.” The mother is Vidula, a
widowed queen ; her son, Sunjoy, has been dis-
possessed of his kingdom by the King of Sindhu.
Sunjoy has grown apathetic ; he will not lift his
finger to regain the throne of his forefathers. He
feels that, circumstanced as he is, all attempts to
oust the proud conqueror must prove futile ; he
therefore ” plays for safety ” — safety in dishonour !
Vidula, on the contrary, is an unwomanly woman in
the Shavian sense ; she addresses to her unmanly
man of a son spirited words, rousing him to action.
Death is preferable to slavery ; death on the battle-
field is to be preferred to eating one’s heart out in
the comparative security of one’s place of abject
retreat. Vidula, woman though she is, is all for
blood, toil, tears and sweat ; she will not countenance
acquiescence in a visible wrong ; she will banish
all softness and timidity and sloth and embrace the
blood and iron of heroic warfare ! Neither the

97

bKi AUKOiilNjJO

fearful horrors of war nor the hopeless uncertainty
of its ultimate outcome deters her from urging upon
Sunjoy the imperative need to give battle to the
enemy.

Vidula is thus a scream of passion — radiant, full-
throated and inspiring. Sri Aurobindo wields the
Locksley Hall metre with commendable dexterity
and power, and the mother's exhortation to the son
acquires in result the topicality and universality of a
moving patriotic anthem ;

“ Son,” she cried, “ no son of mine to make thy mother’s

heart rejoice !

Hark, thy foemcn mock and triumph, yet to Jive is still thy

choice.

Nor thy hero father got thee, nor I bore thee in my womb.
Random changeling from some world of petty souls and

coward gloom !

Out to battle, do thy man’s work, falter not in high attempt ;
So a man is quit before his God and saved from self-
contempt

Sunjoy, Sunjoy, waste not thou thy flame in smoke !

Impetuous, dire.

Leap upon thy foes for havoc as a famished lion leaps.
Storming through thy vanquished victors till thou fall on

slaughtered heaps

Shrink not from a noble action, stoop not to unworthy deed !
Vile are they who sloop, they gain not Heaven’s doors, nor

here succeed

98

MlSGJilvJ-.AlSJilOUS PUJbJLivy

When thou winnest difficult victory from the clutch of

fearful strife,

I shall know thou ait my ofifspnne and shall love my son

indeed.” 1

Sri Aurobindo admits that the style of the
Original Sanskrit is “ terse, brief, packed and
allusive, sometimes knotted into a pregnant obscurity
by the drastic economy of word and phrase,”® But
the “ free poetic paraphrase ” conveys an adequate
impression of the original, and occasional lines
like —

Gathering here an earthly glory, shining there like Indra’s

sun. . . ®

Lo ! we toss in shoreless waters, be the haven to our sail 1

Lo 1 we drown in monstrous billows, be our boat with

kindly hail ! . . *

assume a diamond’s edge and glitter. However, it
is only when the poem is read aloud at a stretch
that it fully brings out Sri Aurobindo’s mastery of
rhythm and language, which are often seen to be
perfectly attuned to Vidula’s tempestuous passion
and truly torrential speech.

Vidula is no doubt but a page from the Maha-
bharata ; and yet, appearing as it did during the
hectic days when the mantra of Bankim Chandra's

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, pp. 231-2 ; 233 ! 234 : 241 ; and 242.

2. Ibtd., II, p. 231.

3. Ibid , II, p. 236.

4. Ibid., II, p. 238.

7

99

SRI AUEOBINDO

Bandemataram was reverberating through the
length and breadth of the country, Vidula could not
help acquiring a tremendous political connotation,
quite apart from its value as a poem. Wasn’t the
Mother both Vidula and the Patroness of Arya-
sthan ? Wasn’t the Son both the slothful Sunjoy and
also ever-ageing India who is also for ever young ?
Any subject nation in the world might find the
poem inspiring. Further, there are passages which,
though they were penned in Sanskrit by Vyasa so
many centuries ago, seem to refer, not so much to
conditions that subsisted some thousands of years
ago, but rather to the predicament in the world
to-day, — and not only in India but in many other
countries in the world :

Now this nation and this army and the statesmen of the

land,

All are torn by different counsels and they part to either

hand.^

Is this General de Gaulle addressing the French
people or Dr. Edouard Benes addressing on the air
his brother Czechs and Slovaks ? Is it a Marshal
Stalin or a Generalissimo Ghiang addressing a word
of warning and a message of hope to his countrymen,
who are yet grovelling in the stifling groove of an
alien military occupation It is none of these
things ; it is almost an “ old wives’ tale,” as old as

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 245.

2. Written in October 1943.

MISCELlANj^OUS poetry

the Mahahharata, and perhaps older still ; but its
relevance is perennial, and hence Vidula will ever
move men’s hearts more than trumpets or bugle-
sounds.

IV

During his stay in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo wrote
a number of lyrical poems — about twenty in all —
which owe their primary inspiration to his growing
familiarity with Vedantic ideas and ideals. The
Upanishads and the Gita had swum into his ken
and stimulated in him a spirit of restless philoso-
phical inquiry into the ultimates of life. He now
tirelessly pondered over God, Man and Nature,
Providence, Foreknowledge and Fate, Rebirth,
Evolution and Progress ; and as he pondered, as he
perceived a particular movement of thought, as he
glimpsed in the prevalent obscurity and confusion
some inspiring vision, he endeavoured to express his
unique thought movements and experiences in terms
of verse. Mere wonder has thus given place to a
mood of inquiry ; now inquiry gives rise to daring
speculation and to a dialectic of doubt ; and these,
again, at last crystallize into a core of Faith. On the
merely intellectual plane, the doubts are quite
stilled, the crust of agnosticism and European
culture lies about in .fragments, and lo ! Sri
Aurobindo has safely come through !

But as yet Sri Aurobindo was grappling with the
Ultimate only with the aid of his intellect and im-

TOT

SRI AUROBINDO

agination ; he was, no doubt, groping towards
spirituality, but he had not succeeded in making it
the ruling principle of his life. Thus these early
poems are not, strictly speaking, mystical outpour-
ings ; Sri Aurobindo is writing these poems merely
from the levels of the Higher Mind or the Illumined
Mind ; and he is giving us only philosophical general-
izations or prints of vividly imagined^ facets of the
Truth. It must be remembered here that “ the
mental intuitions of the metaphysician or the
poet for the most part fall far short of a concrete
spiritual experience ; they are distant flashes, sha-
dowy reflections, not rays from the centre of Light.”^
But even these are very valuable to us at one stage
of our spiritual development and for ever valuable
as poetry. As Sri Aurobindo has clinchingly put
it, "a philosophic statement about the Atman is a
mental formula, not knowledge, not experience ; yet
sometimes the Divine takes it as a chamiel of touch ;
strangely, a barrier in the mind breaks down, some-
thing is seen, a profound change operated in some
inner part, there enters into the ground of the
nature something calm, equal, ineffable. . . .Similar
touches can come through art, music, poetry .... All
things in the Lila can turn into windows that open
on the hidden Reality.”®

Some of these early philosophical poems — In the

1. The Riddle of This World, p. 47

2. Ibid,, pp. 47-8.

JO"?

MISCELLANEOUS POx^IKY

Moonlight, for instance — are mainly intellectually
sustained and but fitfully acquire the piercing accents
of poetry. Others like To the Sea and The Vedan-
tin’s Prayer, for all their thought-content and
mastery of phrase, do not seem to employ the
absolutely appropriate rhythm, divinely appointed
as it were for the communication of mystic truths.
But even these pieces display a marvellous metrical
craftsmanship and a beautiful precision in language.
On the other hand, there are poems like A Child's
Imagination, Revelation, and The Sea at Night that
are poetry first and foremost, and philosophy only
afterwards. Finally, a dialogue like The Rishi and
poems like Who and A Vision of Science have an
Upanishadic, even a Vedic, ring and come to us
like whispers and communications from another
world, the world of archetypes and superconscient
self-luminous Truth.

In these poems, Sri Aurobindo thinks and argues
and affirms after the manner of the Vedantin. The
Ultimate — Parabrahman — ^is shadowed forth as Be-
ing, Knowledge and Delight :

This was the triune playground that He made

And One there sports awhile. He plucks His flowers
And by His bees is stung ; He is dismayed.

Flees from Himself or has His sullen hours.

The Vedantin would gladly clutch at the intangilple,
— ^he would gladly scale the heights of Brahma-

I. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 143.

SRI AUKOBINUU

knowledge ; but while the spirit is willing, the flesh
is weak ; therefore the Vedantin sends forth this
pra3fer to the Supreme :

O lonely Truth !

Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still
Deceive my youth.

These clamours still ;

For I would hear the eternal voice and know

The eternal Will

O hidden door

Of Knowledge, open ! Strength, fulfil thyself I
Love, outpour

" Distant flashes ” presently reach the Vedantin ;
his soul sees “ lustre in midnight ” and beholds
" stars born from a thought”® ; his soul is verily like
a tree ” earth-bound, heaven-amorous”^ ; it can see
beyond ” a rough glimmering infinity”^ ; and,
by and by, the Vedantin is able to affirm the Ever-
lasting Yea ever so often and in ever so many ways.

Two things are clear to him : firstly, that the
intellect by itself is but a partial guide, and often
an even deceptive guide, in spiritual matters :

The intellect is not all ; a guide within
Awaits our question. He it was informed
The Reason, He surpasses ; and unformed
Presages of His mightiness begin.®

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, pp. 136-7.

2. Ibid., I, p. 124.

3. Ibid., I. p. 128,

4. Ibid., I, p. 135.

5. Ibid., I, p. 168,

104

MISCELLANEOUS POETRY

And, secondly, it is now clear to him that Death is
not really a badge of his limitation, but rather of
his freedom :

Life only is, or death is life disguised, —

Life a short death until by life we are surprised^ ;

again :

He made an eager death and called it life,

He stung Himself with bliss and called it pain^ ;

and Death “ is but changing of our robes to wait in
wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate.”® Tribula-
tions are but trials for testing our capacity for
experiencing God ; danger and difficulty, pain and
defeat, are only the ghost-creations of the deluded
mind. The true Self is above and beyond all the
seeming limitations of the world.

In the fullness of his self-vision, the poet can
tongue forth the Everlasting Yea in different ways :

All music is only the sound of His laughter,

All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss ;

Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridal
Of Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss

In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages.
Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,

Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinker

He is throned in His seats that for ever endure. . . .

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 141.

2. Ibid., I, p. 143

3. Ibid; 1 , p. 144.

lot;

SRI AUROBINUO

It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,

And into the midnight His shadow is thrown ;

When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,
He was seated within it immense and alone. ’•

The anapaestic measure gives these stanzas — ^which
are taken from the poem entitled. Who — an almost
Swinburnian rapidity of movement, and hence the
revelations come one after another in a blinding
cataract. In another poem, A Vision of Science,
occurs an equally ennobling asseveration :

" For Thou, O Splendour, art myself concealed.

And the grey cell contains me not, the star
I outmeasure and am older than the elements are.
i Whether on earth or far beyond the sun,

I, stumbling, clouded, am the Eternal One.”®

The architectonics of the above passage truly
transmute into beautiful poetry even the tremendous
energy that informs it.

The Everlasting Yea is thus affirmed in divers
tunes by the adept singer ; it is the finale to the
Arctic Seer’s revelation :

Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set
In the huge press

Of many worlds to build a mighty state
For man’s success.

Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,
Perfect the race.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 123.

2. Ibid., I, p, 127.

106

MISCj^IXANiiOUb PO^IKY

For thou art He, O King. Only the night
Is on thy soul

By thy own will. Remove it and recover
The serene whole

Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover
To God the goal.'-

The Kingdom of God is here , — and He is to be
sought and found upon the earth ! Man need not
always be cribbed by the limitations of death, desire
and incapacity. Man can exceed himself and
achieve Freedom, Power and Immortality. The
Iron Age is already a thing of the past :

Only now

The last fierce spasm of the dying past
Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed,
Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow.®

Man will rise “ to the good with Titan wings he
will " build immortally with mortal things his
whole body will become a living soul, and he will

Extend Heaven’s claim upon the toiling earth
And climb from death to a diviner birth
Grasped and supported by immortal Will.”®

V

The bulk of Sri Aurobindo’s poetical output
during the Baroda period has now been surveyed

in considerable detail The many translations from

!

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 162.

2. Ibid., I, p. 170.

3. Ibid., I, p. 170.

107

SlU aukobimjju

Bengali and Sanskrit ; the various philosophical
poems ; the metrical romances, Urvasie and Love
and Death, and Perseus the Deliverer, in a class apart ;
and Baji Prabhou and Vidula, both poems with an
underlying patriotic purpose : these were the achieve-
ments of less than fifteen years of poetical activity
when their author was also simultaneously pursuing
the exhausting profession of teaching and, towards
the end, the even more exhausting profession of
journalism and politics.

What is truly remarkable in these early poems
of Sri Aurobindo is their amazingly flawless metrical
craftsmanship. A stay of fourteen years in England
during the most impressionable period of his life
had given Sri Aurobindo an impeccable ear for
English sound values ; and a prolonged and intimate
familiarity with classical languages like Greek,
Latin and Sanskrit had facilitated his mastery of
regular verse forms. Authentic poet and thinker
that he has always been, Sri Aurobindo has known
all the time that poetry is not metre merely but only
uses it as its fit vehicle for articulation. As he once
remarked, “ Poetry, if it deserves the name at all,
comes always from some subtle plane through the
creative vital and uses the outward mind and other
external instruments for transmission only.”^ If
the inspiration is not urgent enough, or if the
metrical craftsmanship is not consummate enough

I. Letter to Ainalkiran ; quoted in Anami, p, 275.

MlSL.iiJ^LA>4j^OUS POa-TRY

we have either verse that is pleasing and faultless or
poetry that just misses its name and its vocation.
As Sri Aurobindo pithily put it, without bhava —
without the creative vital itself participating in the
poetic creation — all metrical melody can only be a
" melodious corpse.”^ But whereas the breeze of
inspiration bloweth where it listeth and cannot be
summoned to order, metrical mastery can generally
be acquired and retained. Meanwhile the poet
can but wait for the unpredictable moment when
inspiration will impinge upon the creative vital and
enkindle the mere framework of verse into the
unfading incandescence of poetry.

Sri Aurobindo “ was born as a poet and he is a
born poet”^ ; but even a born poet cannot always
write at the top of his form. Poetry should give
us, not a system of thought, but the poetry of thought,,
not philosophy, but the poetry of philosophy.
Even during the Baroda period, Sri Aurobindo'
frequently achieved this feat of transfiguration.
The failures are unimportant, the successes alone
should demand our attention and compel our ad-
miration. In a poem like Rebirth, rhythm and
phrase fuse again and again into a reality of poetic
communication ; A Child’s Imagination, that effusion
of pure melody, embodies at the same time a potent-
revelation :

1 . Letter to Dilip.

2 . Collected Poem'! and Plays, 1, Publisher’s Note.

109

SRI AUROBIINUO

O thou golden image,

Miniature of bliss ....

God remembers in thy bosom

All the wonders that He wrought^

And this other short piece, The Sea at Night, is
almost perfect ; in it also sound and sense cohere
into a purposive unity :

The grey sea creeps half-visible, half-hushed,

And grasps with its innumerable hands

These silent walls. I see beyond a rough

Glimmering infinity, I feel the wash

And hear the sibilation of the waves

That whisper to each other as they push

To shoreward side by side, — long lines and dim

Of movement flecked with quivering spots of foam,

The quiet welter of a shifting world. ^

The longer poems and dramas, however, are not
always consistently good as sheer poetry. As Sri
Aurobindo himself once wrote, summarizing Fu-
turist views on the question : " Length in a poem

is itself a sin, for length means padding .... a long
poem is a bad poem .... only brief work, intense,
lyrical in spirit, can be throughout pure poetry.”®
On the other hand, Keats has remarked that “ a
long poem is a test of invention, which I take to
be the Pole Star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 134.

2. Ibid., I, p. 135.

3. Letter to Dilip,

TIO

MiSCELLANiiOUS EOE'iRY

imagination the rudder.” Even in Milton’s, and
certainly in Wordsworth’s, poetical output, con-
siderable stretches of verse can be discovered which,
while they are eloquent or effective otherwise, yet
fail to touch the level of pure poetry. This is so
in Sri Aurobindo’s longer poems as well. Passages
of impassioned poetry are met with fairly frequently
enough ; but passages less charged with poetic
emotion also supervene. To say so is by no means
to indulge in detraction ; it is only to admit the
inevitable limitations of " objective ” poetry. The
writer of an epyllion or of a metrical romance or of a
drama can always give us melodious or memorable
verse ; he can be consistently eloquent and effective ;
but he cannot consistently transport us with the
piercing “ sublime ” of ‘‘ pure ” poetry.

As a metrical craftsman, Sri Aurobindo is with-
out an equal in Indo-Anglian literature ; and not
many contemporary practitioners of verse among
Englishmen have given proof of the same facility
and dexterity in wielding the instrument of blank
verse as is evidenced in Urvasie, Love and Death,
The Hero and the Nymph, Perseus the Deliverer and
Baji Prabhou. The late Lytton Strachey aptly
compared blank verse to the Djinn in the Arabian
Nights ; it is either the most terrible of masters or
the most obedient and helpful of slaves ; one must
know the mantra of metrical mastery to be able to
.awe the Djinn into utter obedience — and there is
very little doubt that Sri Aurobindo managed to

III

SRI AUKOBINDO

master the mantra, and hence the Djinn, quiet early
in his life. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth,
Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, they all
knew the secret, and they all could breathe into
the seeming irregularity of blank verse the norm of
iambic rhythm, that permitted a thousand and one
fluctuations and yet challengingly remained itself.
This Sri Aurobindo also could do — and, even
during the Baroda period, he did it again and
again, astonishing and satisfying us at the same time.
The shifting caesuras, the unexpected substitutions,
the sheer weight of occasional polysyllables, the
startling inversions, the stinging wrenched accents,
the sense often triumphantly overwhelming and
overflowing the metrical pauses, these and other
“ tricks of the trade ” make many a blank verse
passage in Sri Aurobindo’s poems and plays partake
of the character of a bewilderingly beautiful sym-
phony. The agonized heart of an Andromeda or a
Pururavas or a Ruru finds in blank verse a splendid
medium for self-expression ; the vaunts and de-
monic imaginings of Polydaon, the outspoken
utterances and curses of Gassiopea, the sweet-sad
virgin ecstasies of Urvasie, the exultations and
jealousies and distractions of lovers, all, all are
conveyed by Sri Aurobindo through blank verse
rhythms, possessing almost always the qualities of
flexibility, charm and vitality.

At times, however, Sri Aurobindo’s muse throws
out gem-like single lines that One might treasure

IT'’

MISCELLANiiOUS POElxiY

long in one's memory :

O iron-throated vast unpitying sea ^

Titanic on the old stupendous hills ^

Bridal outpantings of her broken name. . . ®

Such lines sing themselves out in the chambers of
the subconscious long after the poem itself has
been read and all but forgotten. More rarely, one
comes across a blank verse paragraph whose archi-
tectonics imprint themselves in the fabric of one’s
memory for ever and for ever. Many such signi-
ficant streams of ordered and purposeful sound
have already been quoted in the previous chapters
and they all confidently proclaim Sri Aurobindo to
be an accomplished and an outstanding English
poet. Here are only names — four almost unpro-
nounceable names :

Python and Naga monstrous, Joruthcaru,

Tuxuc and Vasuki himself, immense,

Magic Carcotaca all flecked with fire d

but it is no mere catalogue of the names of non-
existing pythons and snakes. Sri Aurobindo has
waved his wand, invoked the mantra of blank verse,
and turned mere names into the magic of imperish-
able poetry. In his passion and in his scholarship.

1. Collected Poems and Plays, I, p. 273.

2. Ibid., I, p. 53.

3. Ih’d., I, p. 95.

4. Ibtd., I. p, 109.

ii:^

SRI AUKOBINUO

in his classicisms and in his inversions, in his
austerity and in his sublimity, in his organ- voiced
puissance and in his inspiring solitariness, Sri
Aurobindo is the most Miltonic of the Indo- Anglian
poets ; and yet, Miltonic as he is, he never ceases to
be Sri Aurobindo also, — and that is the measure of
his distinction as a great English poet.

114

Part II

PATRIOT AND PROPHET

8

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PLUNGE INTO POLITICS
I

We have seen that Sri Aurobindo's Urvasie,
Love and Death and Perseus the Deliverer are not only
poems, and very good as poems, but that they are
also poems with a purpose. How shall man conduct
himself on what seems to be no better than — or
nothing else than — " life's scaffold ”? Love is not
enough ; the selfish way is a thing that perverts the
cosmic aim and often even leaves a distaste behind.
Man must, therefore, rather learn to serve others,
not solely serve himself ; he must acquire the
fortitude to be able to sacrifice his very life, should
it become necessary, at the altar of a noble cause.
Pururavas failed ; Ruru failed ; they failed India,
they let down a high and pure ideal in preference to
a selfish one. There was, no doubt, a touch of
greatness in them both, — ^they were willing to give
up everything for the sake of an Urvasie or of a
Priyumvada, — but they were not great enough !

In Perseus the Deliverer, on the other hand, Sri
Aurobindo tried to interpret the idea of progress
in his own way. The Divine and Asuric forces
are ever struggling for mastery ; the Divine forces

SRI AUROBlNUO

work through certain willing instruments, the Asuric
through others ; but the Divine must always ulti-
mately triumph over the Asuric, and thus progress
is an assured thing. The cosmic struggle between
the Divine and the Asuric forces is particularized,
now with greater now with lesser intensity, in
individual human conflicts or more wide-spread
conflicts between whole nations and peoples. When
thus giant forces join issue, people pin their faith
in a Messiah, an Avatar, a divine-human personality ;
Perseus is presented as such a personality ; he is,
as it were, “ the divine Seer- Will descending upon
the human consciousness to reveal to it the divine
meaning behind our half-blind action and to give
along with the vision the exalted will that is faithful
and performs and the ideal force that executes
according to the vision,”^ And yet, transcending
both the individual and cosmic conflicts, Reality is
for ever the same. Both the horror of the conflict
and the peaceful close of its periodical resolution
are part and parcel of the unescapable law of Be-
coming ; in other words, “ world-existence is the
ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body
of the God numberlessly to the view : it leaves that
white existence precisely where and what it was,
ever is and ever will be ; its sole absolute object is
the joy of the dancing.”^

1. Sri Aurobindo, Ideal and Progress, p. 15.
a. The Life Divine, I, p. 119.

IWi. i'JLUNGE INTO POLITICS

It is clear from the above that Sri Aurobindo
was preoccupied, even when he was but a con-
scientious Professor of English or an accomplished
poet and dramatist, with other things — ^with the
problem of service and sacrifice and of right aspira-
tion and conduct. From the very first, the idea of
personal salvation or of individual felicity did not
seem to Sri Aurobindo anything like a supreme
aim, worth being pursued for its own sake ; a solitary
salvation leaving the world to its fate was almost
distasteful to him. No doubt, he would read and
he would think and he would write poetry, he would
plan and he would work and he would achieve, —
but on whose behalf ? Not for his own sake — he
was very sure about that ; for whose sake, then
For a time it appeared to him that his duty lay
in trying to wake up his countrymen — especially
his own brothers and sisters of Bengal — ^from their
all too humiliating stupor. An alien rule had
brought in its equipage an entirely new set of
values which had become the ruling ideas of the
Indian intelligentsia. Not merely Bengal, but the
whole of India, “ was once drunk with the wine of
European Civilization, and with the purely intellec-
tual teaching that it received from the West. It

I. Compare what Sn Aurobindo wrote in 1921 ; “ The yoga we
practise, is not for ourselves alone, but for humanity, Its object is not
personal muktt .... but the liberation, of the human race." (The Yoga
and its Objects, p. s).

SRI AUROBl>JUO

began to see all things, to judge all things, through
the imperfect instrumentality of the intellect. When
it was so, Bengal (and the rest of India also, let us
add) became atheistic, it became a land of doubters
and cynics.”^ The newly-educated Indian — es-
pecially if he happened to be, in addition, an
“ England-returned ” gentleman — became a ridicul-
ous perversion of his European contemporary ; as
Professor Radhakrishnan has pointed out, " his voice
became an echo, his life a quotation, his soul a
brain, and his free spirit a slave to things.” De-
formed though such people were, they would not
admit the fact ; rather, as with the followers of
Comus,

so perfect is their misery,

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,

And boast themselves more comely than before.®

Sri Aurobindo revolved these things in his mind
and deplored the apathy, the selfishness and the
cynicism that seemed to have so completely annexed
the body and the soul of the average educated
Indian. Sri Aurobindo had decided, even when he
was in England, to devote his life to the service of
his motherland and the task of achieving her libera-
tion from bondage. He began (as we saw in an
earlier Chapter), soon after his return to India, to
write anonymously on political matters to the

I. Speeches of Aurobindo GItose, p. ig.
a. Milton, Comus, 11 . 73-5.

I-ro

IHa PLIjNCjj^ iwro POLilXGS

popular press, trying to awaJcen the nation to the ideas
of the future. But these articles were not well
received by the leaders of the Nineties ; Sri Auro-
bindo was persuaded to desist from publishing
further articles in the same strain, and hence he
drew back into silence. But not for a second did
he abandon his ideas or his hope of an effective
action in the political sphere.

Years passed, and the question — the overwhelm-
ing question — returned periodically, demanding an
answer every time : Gould not something be done
Could not Sri Aurobindo find an opportunity for
service in the larger life of Bengal, — of the Indian
nation itself ? He knew well enough that he was
ready for making whatever sacrifices might be
called for in the interests of the Mother. As he
wrote some years later : “ A man capable of self-

sacrifice, whatever his other sins, has left the animal
behind him ; he has the stuff in him of a future and
higher humanity.”^ Not in pride, but simply as
an item of self-knowledge, Sri Aurobindo knew
quite well of his own individual capacity for self-
sacrifice.

But that was not enough : other parties had to be
considered, the preparedness or otherwise of the
country also had to be weighed in the balance
without a tinge of self-deception. Sri Aurobindo
knew that " a nation capable of a national act of

I, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 47.

SRi AUROBlNiJO

self-sacrifice ensures its future but — this was the
important question — ^was the Indian nation as yet
capable of such a national act of self-sacrifice ?

Sri Aurobindo weighed, and considered, and
began a work that was still nameless ; in the course
of the work he got into touch with men that counted,
with groups that counted ; he went to Bengal “ to
see what was the hope of revival, what was the
political condition of the people, and whether there
was the possibility of a real movement what he
found there w^s " that the prevailing mood was
apathy and despair.”^ The moment for public
work had not come ; he decided — this was soon
after the turn of the present century — to return
to Baroda and to continue his political work behind
the scenes in silence.

II

It must be clear from the foregoing account that
at least since 1902 — if not even earlier — Sri Auro-
bindo had wished to enter the political fray and
contribute his mite to the forces that were seriously
working for the country’s redemption and rehabilit-
ation. He had already joined, with some of the
more advanced leaders, to organize bodies for

1 . The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p, 47.

2. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p, 26.

IHJi Jr-LUNGi. INTO POLITICS

political action, which would act when the time
for it came ; but as yet he could do little in public.
The Programme of the secret organization was at
first swaraj, boycott, and swadeshi, — swaraj meaning
to Sri Aurobindo, not an. attenuated form of colonial
self-government, but complete independence^
Meanwhile the " mendicant ” policy of the
" moderates ” continued as the official policy of the
Indian National Congress ; the political pulse of the
nation was below par ; his own province of Bengal
— anything but intrepid at the time — ^was in no
mood to be persuaded by Sri Aurobindo and his
gospel of virile nationalism. He decided therefore
to ply the pedagogic furrow for yet a while longer,
till Bengal and the country as a whole should be
willing and ready to receive and translate into
action his militant nationalist programme,

It was now that the nationalist party received
help from a most unexpected quarter, — Lord Gur-
zon, the Governor- General. Not only did he, by
making a fetish of bureaucratic efficiency, progres-

I. The word swaraj was first used by the Bengali-Maratha publicist,
Mr. Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar, author of Desher Katha, a book giving all
the details of India's economic servitude, which had an. enormous influence
on the young men of Bengal and helped to turn them into revolutionaries.
The word was taken up as their ideal by the revolutionary party and
popularized by the vernacular paper, Sandhya, edited by Brahmabandhab
Upadhyaya ; it was caught hold of by Dadabhai Naoroji at the Calcutta
Congress as the equivalent of colonial self-government, but did not long
retain that depreciated value. It was Sri Aurobindo who first used its.
English equivalent, “ independence," and reiterated it constantly in the;
Bandemataram as the one and immediate aim of national politics.

123

SRI AUROBINDO

sively irritate the sober sections of Indian opinion ;
not only did he, with his indiscreet and insolent
orations, exasperate and enrage national self-respect ;
but he truly surpassed even himself by planning
what was to prove the culminating act of his political
unwisdom, the “ partition of Bengal.” The people
of Bengal threw off the cloak of political lethargy
and wished to assert their self-respect, their birth-
right to live and die as one people. And not Bengal
only, but the whole of nationalist India was agitated
over the “ partition ” question.

And what were Sri Aurobindo’s thoughts during
the crisis ? These were vividly — almost with pro-
phetic and poetic fervour and intensity — expressed
in the course of a letter that Sri Aurobindo wrote
to his wife from Baroda towards the end of August
1905.^ He asked his wife to remember that she is
married to a peculiar, an extraordinary, man : he
might be called even a mad man. But when a
‘‘ mad” person achieves the thing his mind is set
on, he is acclaimed by the world a ” great ” man.
Sri Aurobindo himself had not yet achieved his
aim, he had not even seriously and regularly thrown
himself into his work. But the day was not far off

j . This and two other letters, written originally in Bengali, were seiz-
ed by the police during house-search and produced later in court. No au-
thorized English rendering of these letters is available. Sri Sisirkuraar Mitra
kindly explained them to me sentence by sentence ; my summaries are
based upon the notes I took on the occasion. I have also made use of the
Tamil versions given by Swatni Shuddhananda Bharatiar and Mr. P.
Itodandaraman in their books on Sri Aurobindo.

134

IHE Jt>X.UNGE imo POLniCS

when he would do so ; and would his wife then
stand by his side, truly a sahadharmini, verily her
husband’s shakti ?

Sri Aurobindo proceeded to inform his wife
that he was in the grip of three mighty convictions—
mad ideas, the world will call them, — three supreme
frenzies. Firstly, Sri Aurobindo firmly believed that
all his possessions were his only on trust — they were
really God’s ; out of his earnings he could keep for
himself only a bare minimum, the rest was to be
spent on dharmakarya. So far he had returned to
God only two annas in the rupee ; he had rendered
Him only such imperfect accounts ! It was very
easy to give money to his wife or to his sister,
Srimati Sarojini Devi ; Sri Aurobindo felt that it was
his duty to look upon all the thirty crores of Indians
as his own brothers and sisters ; it was his duty —
it was the condition under which he had received
money from God — ^to do all that lay in his power to
relieve the phenomenal misery of the people of his
country.

Secondly, Sri Aurobindo desired with his whole
heart to see God — ^see Him face to face — ^however
difficult the journey and however long the way.
If God exists — ^and He does ! — there must be a means
of confronting Him tke-d-Ute, experiencing Him ;
the Hindu scriptures say that God too can be seen,
and prescribe certain vidhis for the attainment of
that end. From personal experience — limited
though it was — Sri Aurobindo could assure his

SRI ADKOxliNUO

wife that there is abiding truth in what the Hindu
scriptures say. Would she, his wife, would she
also keep abreast of him — come behind him, if she
cannot come alongside of him — on his God-ward
journey ?

Thirdly, Sri Aurobindo looked upon his country,
not as a Geographical entity spotted with hills and
lined with rivers and shaded with plains, but as
the Mother.^ He saw always the spiritual reality
behind the material body of the Mother. A
demon was sucking the Mother’s life-blood and he,
Sri Aurobindo, knew that he had the power to
redeem Her from the demon’s grasp ; and he would
do it, not by means of kshatratej, but by virtue of
his brahmatej.^ It was a mahavrata Sri Aurobindo
was determined to carry on to a successful conclusion.
Nor was all that a passing whim. It was with this
in his bones that God had sent him to the world.
The seed had started to sprout at the age of fourteen ;
it had become steady and firm at the age of eighteen.
Would she, she his own wife, would she stand by
his side and be a source of encouragement and

I. In 1933, in reply to Nirodbaran’s query whether the expression
Mother applied to India was the utter truth or only a poetic or patriotic
sentiment, Sri Aurobindo wrote in reply ; " My dear sir, I am not a

materialist. If I had seen India as only a geographical area with a
number of more or less interesting or uninteresting people in it, I would
hardly have gone out of my way to do all that for the said area.”

a. Referring to this passage, C. R, Das said during the Alipur case :

" Here is a man who regards it as a part of his ideal of religion to
bring about the salvation of his country, and that by applying
brahmatej."

126

IJblJi PLuNGJi IMlO POLniGS

strength to him ? Giving up all fear, putting her
trust in God in a mood of absolute self-surrender,
she, she an apparently weak woman, even she can
dare and achieve much ! Together they could then
start fulfilling God's aims !

Ill

Presently, Curzon’s act of vandalism — the Parti-
tion of Bengal — became law on the 29th September
1905. Immediately Bengal as one man decided to
give battle to the bureaucracy till the Act was annul-
led. The sixteenth of October was observed by the
people of the two cleft portions of Bengal as a day
of mourning and fasting and resolution. British
cloth in huge piles was symbolically set fire to ;
hundreds of young men left their schools and
colleges in protest against the mad policy of the
Government ; in crowded meetings the " National
Proclamation ” was lustily passed and the “ Swa-
deshi Vow ” was administered with an almost
religious fervour. In ail these ways the Lieutenant-
Governors of the two broken provinces were dis-
agreeably made to realize that the whole people were
truly up against the new dispensation.

In the meantime, the biter had himself been
bit, the bumptious and brilliant Governor-General
had been worsted in his encounter with the Gom-
mander-in-Ghief, and so Lord Gurzon left India,
leaving his antagonist, General Kitchener, in full
.possession of the field. Lord Minto now came to

I a?

SR] ALIKOBINJUU

India as the new Governor- General. With John
Morley — of On Compromise fame — for Secretary of
State and Lord Minto as Governor- General, there
was perhaps some chance that the ill-omened
Guraonian policy might be reversed. But considera-
tions of prestige were unhappily involved and the
country was fated to go through a period of distress,
frustration, violence and distraction.

For some years previously, a small but articulate
section within the Congress was demanding bolder
programmes and a more militant gospel for the
purpose of mobilizing all the forces of the country
on the central issue of the national demand. The
Bombay Congress of 1904 recognized the existence
of these " Extremists the Benares Congress of
igos found in the " Extremists ” a warning and a
portent ; the Calcutta Congress of 1906 witnessed
the ocular Extremist protest in the shape of a
" walk out.” The pulse of the nation was no more
cucumber-cold ; it was getting more and more
feverish, and even the Moderates were not quite
proof against the infection :

” Moderates and Extremists alike and with
equal emphasis protested against the attitude of
Government and with equal firmness deprecated
an ignominious begging spirit and urged the
people to take their stand more upon justice than
upon generosity and upon their own rights more
than upon concessions of Government.”^

I. Ambika Charan Mazumdar, Indian National Evolution, pp. iii-4.

THJt x'LtJNGli INl'O POLITICS

And the aged Dadabhai Naoroji, the President of
the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress,
ensured the success of the gathering by the sheer
weight of his personality.

Sri Aurobindo was present at the Congress in
1904, and again in 1906, and took an important
part in the counsels of the Extremist party and in the
formulation of its four-fold programme. After a
severe tussle behind the scenes, this programme was
accepted by the Moderates also, and at last four
momentous resolutions — on self-government, na-
tional education, swadeshi and the boycott of foreign
goods, respectively — ^were passed by the assembled
delegates. The resolutions certainly bore, to quote
the Moderate leader, Mr. Ambika Charan Mazum-
dar, “ unmistakable evidence of the spirit of the
times.

Earlier in the year, in March 1906, Sri Aurobindo
had witnessed in Barisal and in other parts of
Bengal both the revolutionary fervour of the people
and the repressive actions of the Government, He
returned to Baroda, but in July he left again, taking
indefinite leave without pay. For all practical
purposes, he left the Baroda service for good ; he
gave no thought to its settled salary and its seductive
prospects ; the Mother had called him indeed, — ^he
would go ! Was he taking a blind leap into the
Unknown ? — he did not know, and he did not care ;
and he did not hesitate either. Here was work for

I. Ambika Charan Mazumdar, Indian National Evolution, p. 112.

I3Q

Ski aukobinjjo

him, here was a God-given opportunity to serve the
Mother and to realize his own potentialities for
unselfish service ; nothing else mattered !

Soon after his arrival in Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo
took a hand in the direction of the Nationalist
party. Bepin Chandra Pal had just then started a
daily paper, The Bandemataram, with only five
hundred rupees in his pocket. Sri Aurobindo took
up the joint editorship of the paper, edited the paper
during Bepin Pahs absence, and induced the
Nationalist party to take it up as its organ and
finance it. Since he had not yet formally severed his
connection with the Baroda College, he did not
take up, officially and publicly, the editorship of
the Bandemataram, although after Bepin Pal left
that post Sri Aurobindo was practically in full
control of the paper.

Besides, he quickly infused into the scattered
cliques of dissident Congressmen something of his
own fiery idealism and uncompromising national-
ism ; he called a meeting of the leaders of the
Nationalist party at which it was decided, at his
instance, to give up the “ behind the scenes jost-
lings ” with the Moderates, and declare an open
war on Moderatism and place before the country
what was practically a revolutionary programme.
For the time being, and seemingly ail of a sudden,
Sri Aurobindo thus became “ the flaming apostle
of the extreme Nationalists.”^

I. P. G. Ray, Life and Times of C. R. Das, p. 25.

130

lilt i^LUNGi. INIO PULIilCS

In the course of the " Partition of Bengal
agitation, many students had left the colleges
affiliated to the University of Calcutta, and some-
thing had to be done with them and for them.
The Bengal National College was accordingly
founded, and Sri Aurobindo became its first Princi-
pal in August igo6 on a monthly salary of Rs. 150,
exactly one fifth of the salary he had been drawing
in Baroda. Presently, however, he left the orga-
nization of the college to the educationist, Satish
Mukherjee, and plunged fully into politics. During
the next few months, Sri Aurobindo was in indiffer-
ent health ; he took leave from the National College
again and again, and spent four or five months,
between December 1906 and April 1907, at Deoghar,
with the exception of about ten days in December-
January for Congress meetings in Calcutta.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BANDEMATARAM

I

Besides Sri Aurobindo, there were also other
fiery propagators of the new gospel of Nationalism
—notably, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya and Sri
Aurobindo’ s younger brother, Barindra Kumar
Ghose. Other leaders, Bepin Chandra Pal and
Chittaranjan Das, Rabindranath Tagore and Aswini
Kumar Dutt, these and many others, were in one
way or other associated with the new movement,
which aimed, not merely at the annulment of the
partition, but also at national emancipation. The
novels of Bankim Chandra Ghatterjee (and especially
Anandamath, containing the now celebrated song,
Bandemataram) and the dramas of Dwijendralal
Roy, the songs of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarala-
devi Chowdhurani, even hoary Hindu epics and
Puranas, all contributed in very large measure to
the national awakening.

In particular, the song Bandemataram leaped
out of its comparative obscurity within the covers
of a Bengali novel and in one sweep found itself on
the lips of every Indian, man or woman or child.

Sri Aurobindo in Calcutta

BANOjiMAlARAM

To quote Sri Aurobindo :

“ The mantra had been given and in a single
day a whole people had been converted to the
religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed
herself. Once that vision has come to a people,
there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber
till the temple has been made ready, the image
installed and the sacrifice offered. A great
nation which has had that vision can never again
bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a
conqueror.”^

Sri Aurobindo has given us inspiring English
renderings of both Bandemataram and Dwijendralal
Roy’s Mother India. Bankim Chandra’s magical
incantation is untranslatable into verse in another
language “ owing to its unique union of sweetness,
simple directness and high poetic force.”® But Sri
Aurobindo’s poetic version is nevertheless charged
with a high potential of force and suggestiveness :

Thou art wisdom, thou art law.

Thou our heart, our soul, our breath,

Thou the love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.

Thine the strength that nerves the arm.

Thine the beauty, thine the charm

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams.

Dark of hue, O candid-fair
In thy soul, with jewelled hair

1. Bankim-Tilak-Dayamnda, p. 14.

2. Ibid., p. s, Footnote.

SRI AUROjJINJJO

And thy glorious smile divine,

Loveliest of all earthly lands,

Showeriiig wealth from well-stored hands

The Mother is Durga, Lady and Queen, and she is
Lakshmi, "lotus-throned,” and the Muse "a
hundred-toned she is full beautiful, hers is the
" glory of moonlit dreams to her we bow, her
feet we devoutly kiss !

Dwijendralal Roy’s song is almost as inspiring,
apd something of its beauty and force can be in-
ferred even from Sri Aurobindo’s English version :

India, my India, where first human eyes awoke to heavenly

light,

All Asia’s holy place of pilgrimage, great Motherland of

might !

World-mother, first giver to humankind of philosophy and

sacred lore,

Knowledge thou gav’st to man, God-love, works, art,

religion’s opened door ....

Art thou not she, that India, where the Aryan Rishis

chanted high

The Veda’s deep and dateless hymns and are we not their

progeny ?

Armed with that great tradition we shall walk the earth with

heads unbowed :

O Mother, those who bear that glorious past may well be

brave and proud. . . .

1. Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, pp. 3-5; also Collected Poem and Plays,
II, pp. 227-8 ; Sri Aurobindo published besides a vigorous " line by line ”
prose rendering, in the Karmayogin of aotli November 1909, and it is
reprinted in Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, on pp. 5-6.

BAlviUxJMATARAM

India, ray India, who dare call thee a thing for pity's grace

today ?

Mother of wisdom, worship, works, nurse of the spirit’s

inward ray ! ^

It was in India that Lord Krishna sang the Song of
Songs ; it was upon India’s dust that Gouranga
" danced and drank God-love’s mysterious wine
it was India that witnessed the deathless sun of
the Buddha’s compassion and heard the stern
Advaitic gospel of the great Sankara. What if all
that grandeur be now “ dwarfed or turned to bitter
loss and maim ” ? We have not forgotten yet “ the
ideal of those splendid days of gold and the ” new
world of our vision ” shall surely rise indeed and
give back to us our lost heritage !

No wonder Bengali youths and young women
responded pleasurably to these stirring national
songs and no wonder India herself thought that she
was indeed being borne to the haven of emancipation
on the music of Rishi Bankim’s Bandemataram.
It was, thus, the mantra of Bandemataram and the
leap into revolutionary action that changed the
people of the province of Bengal, and even of the
whole country, teaching them the virtues of selfless-
ness, militancy and virility, and the ineradicable
feeling of adoration for the Mother.

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II. pp. 309-10.

13 *;

bl<I AUKOBINUO

II

Sri Aurobindo was now in Calcutta ; he was
at this time comparatively little known outside his
own circle of Nationalists and co-workers, but he
was, in fact, the power behind the Bandemataram
and the brain of the Nationalist party in Bengal.
His editorial and other contributions — many of them
unsigned — to the Bandemataram were the admira-
tion of the people and the despair of the Anglo-
Indian press. In an inconceivably short time, The
Bandemataram became the spearhead of the Nation-
alist movement in Bengal. “ The hand of the master
was in it from the very beginning. Its bold
attitude, its vigorous thinking, its clear ideas, its
chaste and powerful diction, its searching sarcasm
and refined witticism were unsurpassed by any
journal in the country, either Indian or Anglo-
Indian and this was how, within a few months,
“ from the tutor of a few youths ” Sri Aurobindo
became " the teacher of a whole nation."^

Begun as a daily on the 6th August 1906, The
Bandemataram became more and more popular in
the coming months ; its proprietors were therefore
encouraged to bring out also a weekly edition of
the paper from June 2, 1907. It was now possible
for people all over India to get the quintessence of
The Bandemataram in the weekly edition ; and hence

1 . From an article in Svaraj, reproduced in The Karmayogin in 1909.

1.36

BANJDJEMATARAM

the vogue of the paper but increased with time, to
the no small chagrin of the Government and the
Anglo-Indian press.

It is beyond the scope of this study to consider
in detail Sri Aurobindo’s innumerable contributions
to the columns of the Bandemataram. We can
only refer to a few significant ones,— but even so
the choice is not easy ; for, as one examines the old
files of the paper, one lights upon so many brilliant
and forceful editorial contributions that one is
dazzled by their sheer weight and solid and shining
structure of argument. Sri Aurobindo speaks often
in prophetic accents and he is weighty and solemn
and sweetly persuasive on those occasions ; at other
times, he is just a superlatively clever controversial-
ist and then one witnesses a true clash of arms, one
watches with amusement (and pity) the cumbrous
antagonist writhing in the nimble grasp of Sri
Aurobindo. There are other occasions still when
Sri Aurobindo is the tribune of the Indian people
and through him the disarmed and emasculated
millions speak with defiance and pride to the civilized
world in the strength of their new-found self-
confidence and hope. The Prophet of Renascent
India, the Tribune of the People, the Quartermaster-
General of the Nationalists, — ^these are the divers
powers and personalities of Sri Aurobindo that we
glimpse in the Bandemataram contributions ; but
eveh these are only partial manifestations and
emanations of the central Power and Personality

SRI AUKOBlNiJO

whose utter essence we ever vainly try to com-
prehend !

Some of Sri Aurobindo’s political contributions
discuss the proposals for constitutional reform out-
lined by Morley about the middle of 1907. The
Bandemaiaram editorially called these reforms
" Comic Opera ” reforms and acidly pointed out
that ” the right place for this truly comic Council
of Notables with its yet more comic functions is an
opera by Gilbert and Sullivan and not an India
seething with discontent and convulsed by the
throes of an incipient revolution.”^ In a later
editorial, entitled ” Biparita Buddhi,” the Bande-
mataram returned to the attack :

” The atmosphere of the India House, the
debasing responsibility of ofEce, the intoxication
of power, has brought the Jingo and killed the

man The Biparita Buddhi that helps the

regeneration of weak and oppressed peoples is
manifestly at work. We welcome it and pray
for its complete ascendency for sometime in hir.
Morley and other British statesmen.”®

Some of these editorial articles and other snappy
items like satiric compositions and parodies were
the work of Shyamsundar Chakravarti, not of Sri
Aurobindo. Shyamsundar was a witty parodist
.and could write with much humour as also with a

1. The Bandemaiaram (References are to the Weekly Edition), June 9,
1907.

2. Ibid., June 30, 1907.

n8

BANJJliAfATARAM

telling rhetoric ; he had besides caught up some
imitation of Sri Aurobindo’s prose style and many
could not distinguish between their writings.
Whenever Sri Aurobindo was away from Calcutta,
it was Shyamsundar who wrote most of the editorials
for the Bandemataram, those excepted which were
sent by Sri Aurobindo from Deoghar. One of
Shyamsundar’ s successful skits was the ” mock-
petition” to ‘‘Honest John,” a piece of vigorous
and stinging satire which was printed in the in-
augural issue of the Weekly Edition of the Bande-
mataram ; when it was later reprinted in the Glasgow
News, it created quite a stir in Britain, a stir which
had its official repercussions in India.

As a politician it was part of Sri Aurobindo’s
principles never to appeal to the British people ;
and the Bandemataram also avoided such a mendi-
cant policy. But the paper certainly tried to awaken
the Indian nation from its slumber. Sri Aurobindo’s
Vidula — ^to which reference has already been made
in an earlier chapter — appeared in the second issue
of the Bandemataram Weekly, which also contained
Shyamsundar’s ” Unreported Conversation” in
verse between a Briton and Ajit Singh on the eve
of the latter’s arrest. Another inspiring item in the
issue was ‘‘ Pagri Samalo, Jata,” a free rendering by
Shyamsundar of the poem that used to be sung by
the Jats to rouse their countrymen to protest against
the imposition of severe taxes. Perseus the Deliverer,
Sri Aurobindo’s great poetic play, began as a serial

SRI AUROBIJNIJDO

in the issue of June 30, 1907 ; we have already
considered it as poetry and drama, but the readers
of the Bandemataram must have rather seized the
significance of the words, the Deliverer. In the
issue of July 7, again, the Bandemataram merely
printed Wilfrid Blunt’s poem, “ Wind and the
Whirlwind,” and left it by itself to speak in defence
of Indian nationalism. In the next issue of the
weekly edition, Shyamsundar transfers, by sleight
of hand, the “ Trial Scene ” in The Merchant of
Venice to a Calcutta Police Court. The Editor of
the Yugantar, the Bengali newspaper, is Antonio ;
and the denizens of Law and Order constitute
Shylock. It is all in Shakespeare ; but the derogation
is directed against the repressive policy of the
Government.

A week later the satirical poet turns his attention
to the place- seekers and title-hunters who weaken
the Nationalist case. " A Hymn to the Supreme
Bull ’ ’ is supposedly the mantra of these people,
who raise their hands in prayer to the Supreme Bull
and scream the while :

Hail, sempiternal Lord 1 Be bounteous still
To give us only titles and posts, and if sedition
Hath gathered aught of evil, or concealed,

Disperse it, as your police disperse our crowds.^

If satire could hit the bull’s eye with such deadly
accuracy, — ^why, the paper in which such bits

I. The Bandemataram, July 21, 1907.

140

jjA]MiJi.MAiARAM

appeared had every reason to feel proud of its
growing influence in the country. The Bande-
mataram was therefore fully justified in writing on
the occasion of its first anniversary :

" It (the paper) came into being in answer to
an imperative public need and not to satisfy any
private ambition or personal whim ; it was born
in a great and critical hour for the whole nation and
has a message to deliver, which nothing on earth

can prevent it from delivering It claims that

it has given expression to the will of the people
and sketched their ideals and aspirations with
the greatest amount of fidelity.”^

Ill

The growing popularity of the Bandemataram
was, naturally enough, an eyesore to the Govern-
ment, to the Anglo-Indian press and to the ultra-
moderate elements in the country. And yet it
was no easy matter to check the triumphant career
of the paper. The editor of the Statesman bitterly
complained that the editorial articles of the Bande-
mataram were too diabolically clever, crammed
full of sedition between the lines, but legally un-
assailable because of the sheer skill of the language.
The Government too must have shared this view.

I, The Bandemataram, August ii, 1907.

SRJ. AUK0B1JN130

for they never ventured to prosecute the paper for
its editorial or other articles, whether from Sri
Aurobindo’s or from the pen of his three editorial
colleagues. There was also this important con-
sideration, which too might have influenced the
prudent decision of the Government, — ^that Sri
Aurobindo never based his case for freedom on
racial hatred or charges of tyranny or misgovern-
ment. His stand was simply this : even good
government could not take the place of national
government, in other words, independence.

If only the Government had left the Bande-
mataram alone ! But the Biparita Buddhi walked
into the Council chamber and lo ! the Government
■decided to prosecute the Bandemataram, not indeed
on account of any of its editorial articles, but for
having reproduced in it translations of articles
included in the Yugantar case but not actually
used by the prosecution. About the middle of
August 1907, information was brought to Sri
Aurobindo that a warrant had been issued for his
arrest for having published the Yugantar articles
and also for having edited and published a “ Letter
to the Editor ” entitled " Politics for Indians ” in
the Dak edition of the Bandemataram of July 38.
Sri Aurobindo went at once to the Detective Police
Office for surrendering himself. From there he
was taken to Poddopukur Thana, but was soon
released on bail. Two gentlemen. Prof. Girish
Bose of Bangabasi College and Mr. Nixod Mullick

142

BAMDliMATARAM

of Wellington Square, stood surety for Sri Auro-
bindo.^

Previous to the launching of the prosecution
against him, Sri Aurobindo had cotiEned himself
to writing and leadership behind the scenes, not
caring to advertise himself or put forward his
personality. As he wrote to Dilip two or three
decades later : “I was never ardent about fame
even in my political days ; I preferred to remain
behind the curtain, push people without their
knowing it, and get things done .... If and so far
as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to
tolerate it ; but I do not find publicity for its own
sake desirable." The prosecution, however, put
an end to Sri Aurobindo’s behind-the-scenes leader-
ship. His name was in the twinkling of a second
on the lips of a whole people. The mystery of the
authorship of the series of severely, challengingly
and tantalizingly beautiful and brilliant Bande^
mataram articles was cleared at last. Appreciations,
congratulations, exhortations, all sought Sri Auro-
bindo from the four corners of the sub-continent.
The Madras Standard editorially wrote as follows :

" Perhaps, few outside Bengal have heard of
Mr. Aurobindo Ghose, so much so that even
the London Times has persisted in saying that
none but Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal could be the
author of the able articles appearing in the Bande-
mataram In the history of press prosecu-

I. The Bardemataram, August i8, 1907.

143

SRI AUROBINUO

tions in. this country, we have not come across a
man who has been more conspicuous by reason
of his ability and force of character."

The Indian Patriot wrote :

" Mr. Aurobindo Ghose is no notoriety hunter,
is no demagogue who wants to become prominent
by courting conviction for sedition, A man of
very fine culture, his is a lovable nature ; merry,
sparkling with wit and humour, ready in refined
repartee, he is one of those men to be in whose
company is a joy and behind whose exterior is a
steadily growing fire of unseen devotion to a
cause."

And the Mahratta of Poona succinctly declared :
" Who knows but what is sedition today may be
divine truth tomorrow ? Mr. Aurobindo Ghose is
a sweet soul !"

Likewise, messages poured upon Sri Aurobindo.
The late Rabindranath Tagore indited a poetic
appreciation in Bengali, beginning with the well-
known words, " Aurobindo, accept the salutation
from Rabindranath !”^ The students of the Baroda
College — Sri Aurobindo’s own students of but
yesterday-— sent this message : " We the students,

past and present, of the Baroda College, in a meeting
assembled, convey our warmest sympathy to our

1 This was published in the Bandemataram of September 8, 1907.
An English rendering of the poem appears in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir
Third Annual, pp. i-a.

144

iJAMJJliMATARAM

late Vice-Principal Mr. Ghose in his present
trouble.” And a contributor to the Indian Patriot,
who signed himself ” A.S.M.,” asseverated in the
course of his eulogy : “ Slaves of ease and security,

the butterflies of the hour look small and pitiable
by his side.”

Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo had resigned his
Principalship of the Calcutta National College, so
as not to embarrass the authorities of the College
during the time of his prosecution. He was
doubtless the idol of his students and when his
prosecution and his consequent resignation of the
Principalship came to their knowledge, they orga-
nized a meeting of the students and teachers of the
College to record their regret at the resignation
and their sympathy with Sri Aurobindo in his
troubles. On that occasion, Sri Aurobindo was
invited to speak and, in the course of his moving
speech, he remarked :

” I take it that whatever respect you have
shown to me to-day was shown not to me, not
merely even to the Principal, but to your country,
to the Mother in me, because what little I have
done has been done for her, and the slight suffering
that I am going to endure will be endured for her
sake ...... When we established this college,

and left other occupations, other chances of life,
to devote our lives to this institution, we did so
because we hoped to see in it the foundation,
the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which

SRI ADRO±JlJMi)0

is to begin its career after this night of sorrow
and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness
when India will work for the world. What we
want here is not merely to give you a little infor-
mation, not merely to open to you careers for
earning a livelihood, but to build up sons for the

motherland to work and to suffer for her

There are times in a nation’s history when
Providence places before it one work, one aim,
to which everything else, however high and
noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time
has now arrived for our motherland when nothing
is dearer than her service, when everything else
is to be directed to that end. If you will study,
study for her sake ; train yourself body and mind

and soul for her service Work that she

may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All
is contained in that one single advice.”^

Noble words ! And Sri Aurobindo, unlike many
mere politicians, really meant what he said. Work,
plan, read, aspire, exult, suffer, — but all for the
sake of your country, for the Mother’s sake ; chant
the mantra of Bandemataram and plunge into a
career of unselfish service; if your heart is pure
and if you have no personal axes to grind, yours
will be the strength of ten, nay of a hundred thou-
sand ! Onward to victory, then ! Victory to the
Mother 1

I, Speeches qf Aurobindo Ghose, pp, 3-7.

146

BANDEMATARAM

IV

The prosecution against Sri Aurobindo pursued
a strange career. The whole case hinged upon this
question ; who was the editor of the Bandemataram ?
No name used to appear in the paper itself ; in
December 1906, Sri Aurobindo’s name had on a
solitary occasion been printed as the editor, but the
name had at once been withdrawn since he would
not consent to be the de jure editor of the paper.
Bepin Pal was summoned to give evidence on this
question ; and when he refused to be a party to
an unjust proceeding, he was sentenced to six
months’ imprisonment. He went gladly to jail
and the prosecution was in a worse quandary than
ever !

Indeed, the Government had made a laughing-
stock of themselves by launching the prosecution.
As the Punjabee wrote : “ There would have been
some meaning in the case if proceedings had been
taken against the paper (The Bandemataram) for
any of the editorial writings which had given it a
speciality among Indian newspapers but the
flimsy ground — that the paper had reproduced some
articles from another paper — on which the prosecu-
tion chose to stand proved very slippery indeed.
Mr. Ghuckerbutty, the Defence Counsel, was able
to show that Sri Aurobindo was not really responsible
for the publication of the articles. Incidentally Mr.
Ghuckerbutty revealed the fact that Sri Aurobindo
had received during a period of eight or nine

10

147

oKl AUKOxilMUO

months only fifty rupees for contributions to the
Bandematamm !

At last the Chief Presidency Magistrate, one
Mr. Kingsford, delivered his judgement, acquitting
Sri Aurobindo. He also gave it as his considered
opinion that “ the general tone of the Bandemataram
is not seditious.” Thus, as the Bandemataram
wrote editorially on the 29th September 1907, the
prosecution ” ended in the most complete and
dismal fiasco such as no Indian government has
ever had to experience before in a sedition case.”^
The prosecution had only succeeded in bringing
forcibly to the notice of the intelligentsia and even
of the masses the power and the personality behind
the Bandemataram ; for the rest, it had all ended
as boomerang to the bureaucracy.

The story is not, however, without its anti-
climax. Magisterial wrath required a prey and
found in the printer of the Bandemataram an easy
victim. Thus ” only an unfortunate Printer who
knew no English and had no notion what all the
pother was about was sent to prison for a few
months to vindicate the much-damaged majesty
of the almighty bureaucracy.”^ Thou hast con-
quered, indeed, O Bureaucracy !

1. The Bandemataram, September ag, 1907.

CHAPTER NINE

SURAT AND AFTER
I

While the Bandemataram case was going on,
there appeared in the paper three editorial articles
from Sri Aurobindo’s pen with the titles “ The
Foundations of Sovereignty,” ” Sankharitola’s Apo-
logia ” and “ The Unities of Sankharitola ” respec-
tively. In these brilliant, satirical, illuminating
and nimbly controversial articles, Sri Aurobindo
joined issue with Mr. N. N. Ghose of the Indian
Nation; while the articles are doubtless enjoyable
on account of their sparkle and their controversial
brilliance, they are at the same time a serious study
of the problems of nationalism and sovereignty
with reference to Indian conditions. In the first
of the three articles, Sri Aurobindo wrote, in answer
to his own question, — 'What are the elements of
Sovereignty ? — as follows :

” We answer that there are certain essential
conditions, geographical unity, a common past,
a powerful common interest impelling towards
unity and certain political conditions which
enable the impulse to realize itself in an organized
government expressing the nationality and per-

149

SRI AUKOBINlJU

petuating its single and united existence.”^

Sri Aurobindo emphatically maintained that these
conditions obtained in India. In reply to Mr. N, N,
Ghose's contention that the mixture of races
was an insuperable obstacle in the way of national
unity, Sri Aurobindo pertinently declared :

“ One might just as well say that different
chemical elements cannot combine into a single
substance as that different races cannot combine
into a single nation.”®

In another article, written for but not actually
published in the Bandemataram, Sri Aurobindo
went to the very root of the matter and explained in
vivid and almost poetic language the raison d’etre
of Indian patriotism :

”... .the pride in the past, the pain of our
present, the passion for the future are its (i.e.,
patriotism’s) trunk and branches. Self-sacrifice
and self-forgetfulness, great service, high endur-
ance for the country, are its fruits. And the sap
that keeps it alive is the realization of the mother-
hood of God in the country, the vision of the
Mother, the perpetual contemplation, adoration
and service of the Mother.”*

If only Indians would learn to realize themselves,
not in the stifling groove of a mere party or of a

1. The Bandemitaram. August i8, 1907.

2. Ibid., September i, 1907.

3. Printed in .Selections from the Bandemataram (Benares, 1922).

oUKAl AND AFTER

ccrrmunity or of a segment of the country, but in
the infinite bounty of the Mother of All, there
would then indeed be no “ problem ” of Indian
unity to solve !

But these articles — quite apart from their close-
grained fabric of reasoning on the problem of Indian
nationalism — were, after all, shots fired in the
course of a journalistic duel. Sri Aurobindo is
revealed in these articles as an unerring marksman.
Did Mr. N. N. Ghose accuse Sri Aurobindo of
“ incapacity to understand the substance of his
(Mr. Ghose’s) article ”? Very well, then, answered
Sri Aurobindo, “ we quite admit that it is difficult
to understand the mystic wisdom of a sage who
asserts that the soundness of his premises has
nothing to do with the soundness of his conclu-
sions.”^ And so the duel proceeds, and the slovenly
antagonist, fighting with clubs and other useless old
weapons, finds himself worsted in every encounter,
and at last quits the field leaving the editor of the
Bandemataram in proud possession of it.

II

Throughout 1907, the ideological differences
between the Moderates, led by Sir Phirozeshah
Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and V. Krishna-
swami Aiyar, and the Nationalists (or Extremists,

r The Bandemataram, August zs, 1907.

SRI AuROBiNDU

as they were also called), led by Bal Gangadliar
Tilak and Aurobindo Ghose, continued to be
emphasized more and more. The Calcutta Resolu-
tions of 1906 had apparently given little real satis-
faction to either party. The Moderates were
trying, perhaps, to whittle down the implications
of the Calcutta Resolutions ; the Nationalists, on
the other hand, were even more determined to
stick to their guns, nay even to take an extremer
stand on the issue of the national demand.

The Surat Congress of December 1907 was to
give a final decision in the matter ; but even before
that, preliminary skirmishes between the rival
groups were witnessed all over the country and
especially in Bengal and in the Bombay Province.
For instance, in the Midnapur session of the Bengal
Provincial Conference, held in December 1907,
the Nationalists succeeded in getting their own
resolutions passed by the Conference ; subsequently
they held an independent conference of their own
with Sri Aurobindo as President and gave a lead
to Bengal and a warning to the stage-managers of
the Surat Congress. The Lokamanya was overjoyed
and asked Sri Aurobindo to bring as many Nation-
alists as possible to Surat to make the Congress
itself an overwhelmingly Nationalist body.

Sri Aurobindo was thus an acknowledged all-
India leader and a busy publicist. By temperament
he did not love storms and battles ; but he had
become a hero nevertheless, though by " necessity

SliKA’l AND AFTER

rather than by choice.”^ The imprisonment of his
principal co-workers in Bengal, the exile of some
others, and the publicity given to his name by the
Bandematamm case, all compelled him to come
forward and take the lead on the public platform.
In addition to the circulation of the daily and weekly
editions of the Bandematamm, reprints from the
paper also were published from time to time in
Gujarat and had a tremendous vogue all over the
country. All this contributed to Sri Aurobindo’s
universal popularity and justified his position as the
Quartermaster- General of the Nationalist Army.

Shortly before proceeding to Surat to attend
the momentous Congress Session there, Sri Auro-
bindo wrote another letter to his wife which provides
us with a slender clue to the workings of his mind
during this period. Sri Aurobindo begins by saying
that he has not a moment’s rest ; public and private
work, Bandematamm and Congress affairs, are
taking up all his time. His wife should remember
this circumstance particularly : that her husband
is going through a difficult period, different people
trying to pull him in different directions, causing
almost distraction to him. His wife at least should
preserve her poise and be a source of strength to
him. Wedded to a unique individual like Sri
Aurobindo, she is bound to be pursued by diffi-
culties ; but she should bear them calmly and she

I. Paraphrased from a letter to Dilip (1937).

SRI AUROiilNUO

should learn to derive pleasure only in the success
of her own husband’s endeavours. The husband’s
dharma should be the wife’s as well ; if it were
otherwise, she cannot hope to be happy !

From the letter we also learn that Sri Aurobindo
proposed to leave for Surat about the middle of
December and to return to Calcutta on the yth
January 1908.

Ill

Matters came to a head at last at Surat. The
rival parties had come to the “ Sleepy Hollow ” in
full strength and the stage was finally set for a
Marathon contest, — or rather for enacting a pande-
monium. Lokamanya Tilak was the accredited
Generalissimo of the Nationalists, and he was a
whole host by himself. He was, in Sri Aurobindo’ s
words, “ the very type and incarnation of the
Maratha character, the Maratha qualities, the
Maratha spirit, but with the unified solidity in
the character, the touch of genius in the qualities,
the vital force in the spirit which make a great
personality readily the representative man of his
people.”^ He was at Surat with a strong contingent
from Maharashtra — ^but, indeed, he spoke for the
whole nation. It was inevitable that the Zeit

I. Bankim~TUak-Day<manda, pp. 24-5.

SDhtAT AND AFTER

Geist should throw up such a colossus as he :

“ The condition of things in India being
given, the one possible aim for political effort
resulting and the sole means and spirit by which
it could be brought about, this man had to come
and, once in the field, had to come to the front.
The Moderates too had leaders of the calibre of
Phirozeshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rash
Behari Ghose (the President-Elect of the Surat
Congress), and V. Krishnaswami Aiyar. Besides,
there were also Lala Lajpat Rai and Surendranath
Banerjee, who were not quite definitely of either
extreme group. There were, perhaps, reasons
enough for the two groups to clash mightily at
Surat and to carry on the warfare for several months
afterwards. At this distance of time, however, let
us admit that they were all very sincere patriots,
although they did not tackle the problem of win-
ning swaraj in an identical manner. There had
to be that trial of strength at Surat and the subsequent
mutual mud-slinging ; but that need not prevent
our admiration from going out equally, though not
necessarily to an equal degree, to the champions of
both Moderatism and Extremism, men who alike
according to their lights and temperamental limita-
tions, grappled with tasks of almost superhuman
difficulty.

Rightly or wrongly, the Nationalists thought

I. Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, p. iS-

1.^5

SRI AUKOdINDO

that the Moderates wished, if not in letter at least
in spirit, to go back on the Calcutta stand of the
previous yeard They therefore held a separate
conference under the chairmanship of Sri Aurobindo,
" where it was decided that the Nationalists should
prevent the attempted retrogression of the Congress
by all constitutional means, even by opposing the
election of the President if necessary.”^ The
Moderates were equally determined to have things
their own way. In the open session the two groups
could not agree and the proceedings ended — as the
proceedings of the Ramgarh Congress of 1939
nearly ended — in ungovernable excitement and
utter confusion. It is not necessary here to recapi-
tulate in detail all the unsavoury events that were
enacted in the " Sleepy Hollow ” of Surat. The
rival sections gave their own versions of the happen-
ings, the Extremist version being signed by Tilak,
Khaparde, H. Mukherji, B. C. Chatterjee and Sri
Aurobindo. Now a de facto all-India leader, Sri
Aurobindo’ s capacity for intrepid leadership made
a deep impression on the Nationalists from the
different parts of India, and henceforth he could
count on a huge, attentive and adoring audience
wherever he went. Apart from its immediate
political repercussions in the country at large, Surat
projected Sri Aurobindo — almost against his will —

I, Indian National Evolution, Appendix B, pp. xliii-xlvi.
3. Ibid., Appendix B, p. xliii.

SURAT AND AFTER

into the blinding glare of all-India leadership. In
one bound, as it were, he had joined the select band
of Nationalist-Extremists, rubbing shoulders with
men of the stature of Tilak, Lajpat Rai and Bepin
Pal

IV

After the Surat imbroglio, Sri Aurobindo paid
a visit to Baroda and delivered a few public lectures
on the political situation in the country. His
former pupils of the Baroda College were not
unnaturally very much excited when they saw their
revered old teacher ; it is said that they let loose
the horses that were yoked to the chariot in which
Sri Aurobindo was being taken in a procession and
dragged it themselves part of the way !

While in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo consulted
Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, who had come from Gwalior
to Baroda in answer to a wire from Barindra, for
some needed guidance in yoga. Political pre-
occupations apart, or even because of them, Sri
Aurobindo was inveterately drawn to the ardours
of yoga, its disciplines, its thrills, its ecstasies, its
sun-lit beatitudes. Yogi Lele advised Sri Aurobindo
to strive to empty his mind of all mere mental stuff
— ^to make the mind a sheet of white paper to receive
a piece of Divine calligraphy — to purify the system
by ejecting all ego-stuff so that the Divine can take
possession of it and direct its future operations.
It was but a little hint— no more than a tiny

SRI AUROBINCO

seed ; but it fell on the most fertile soil, proved a
banyan seed, and grew into a mighty tree

Branching so broad and long that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
Above the mother tree, a pillared shade
High overarched, and echoing walks between.^

Sri Aurobindo could now face the so-called
“ Battle of Life ” — a more remorseless and ruthless
affair than the Battle of Britain or the Battle of
Burma or the Battle of the Pacific — with complete
equanimity and sober certainty of ultimate fulfil-
ment. It was in such a mood of shanti and clarity
of vision that Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife the
third of the famous letters which, ironically enough,
owe their preservation to the vigilance of the police.
He had, no doubt, originally intended to return
to Calcutta from Surat in the first week of January ;
he had been unable to do so ; nor was it, after all,
his own doing or lack of doing. Whithersoever
God directed him, there he had to go ; he had to
go for doing God's work, not his own ; he, her
husband, was henceforth not a free man ; he was
just an instrument in God’s hands ; his future
movements, his programmes for all the tomorrows
yet to come, all would entirely depend on the will
of God, on that alone. The grace that had flooded
his own soul and truly transfigured it would be hers

1, Paradise Lost, IX. 11 . JD04-7,

sukAt and after

also, if she sought it in the proper manner. Would
she not rise to the height of the possibility opening
up before her and prove her husband’s real helpmate
and shakti ?

The thi'ee letters that Sri Aurobindo wrote to
his wife— there must have been several others also,
but only these three have been saved for posterity —
by themselves tell an enchanting and inspiring story
of aspiration, trial, and fulfilment. In the first,
we gain an inkling into the nature of Sri Aurobindo’s
“ mad ” aspirations ; in the second, we snap him
in a mood of incipient doubt, but of stern endeavour ;
in the third, we see that he has already “ arrived,”
that he has successfully accomplished what Teufels-
drockh calls the ” armihilation of the self.” He
was no more Mr. Aurobindo Ghose, — he was
now Sri Aurobindo, the son and servant of God,
the lover and servant of the Mother, He could
now have told himself — ^as he told "R. on her
birthday” :

Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell.

The stormj that thunJer, winds that sweep ;

Always our Giptain hold, the rudder well,

He does not sleep.^

V

After the Surat debacle, Sri Aurobindo did not
return to Bengal immediately, as he had originally

r. Collected Poem and Plays, II, p. 131.

SRI AUKOBINUU

intended, but went to Poona with Lele ; and after
his return to Bombay, Sri Aurobindo went to
Calcutta. Wherever he stopped on the way for a
day or two, he spoke in public, raising the current
political issues to a moral, almost a religious and
spiritual, plane. Under the auspices of the Bombay
National Union, Sri Aurobindo addressed a large
gathering on the 19th January 1908. He had
meditated for three days with Lele on the top
floor of Majumdar’s house in Baroda, and the
meditation had brought Sri Aurobindo to a condi-
tion of silence of the mind, a condition which he
kept for many months, and indeed always thereafter,
all activity henceforth proceeding only on the surface.
But when Sri Aurobindo went to address the
Bombay National Union, the silence of the mind
was the sole reality and there was no activity on the
surface. Lele told him to make namaskar to the
audience and wait, — and speech would come to
him from some other source than the mind. So in
fact the speech came, and ever since all speech,
writing, thought and outward activity have so come
to him from the same source above the brain-mind.

The Bombay speech is justly famous. He
seemed to the audience as one in the grip of a trance ;
but as he rose to speak, he found the voice, he
found the words ; he spoke with feeling, he spoke
with conviction; he spoke in small, jerky, almost
nervous sentences ; and he spoke neither like a
professional politician nor like an elder statesman,

SUKAT ANjD after

but rather like an evangelist, a prophet :

“ You call yourselves Nationalists. What is
Nationalism ? Nationalism is not a mere political
programme. Nationalism is a religion that has
come from God ; Nationalism is a creed in which
you shall have to live in Bengal, Nation-

alism has come to the people as a religion and it
has been accepted as a religion. But certain
forces which are against that religion are trying
to crush its rising strength. It always happens
when a new religion is preached, when God is
going to be born in the people, that such forces
rise with all their weapons in their hands to

crush the religion Nationalism has not been

crushed. Nationalism is not going to be crushed.
Nationalism survives in the strength of God and
it is not possible to crush it, whatever weapons
are brought against it. Nationalism is immortal ;
Nationalism cannot die .... God cannot be killed,
God cannot be sent to jail.”^

How refreshing — how so very unexpectedly refresh-
ing — must it have been to listen to these pointed,
prophetic utterances, so utterly devoid of mere
political verbiage and legalistic qualification ? The
word “ Nationalism ” is repeated again and again
in a caressing manner, as if it were indeed a “ flame-
word rune the sentences send out their fragrance
and power and one is soon in their thrall ; there is

r, Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 10-12.

t6t

SRI AUKOBINJDO

no escape from their magic spells and vast spiritual
potency !

The worldly wise people, however, must have
heard the speech with a sigh and a shudder, and
gravely nodded their heads in disapproval ; the cold
rationalists must have been aghast that God — ^who
like the British Crown should be above politics-
should thus be trotted out as a clinching argument
from a political platform. But Sri Aurobindo
persevered ; he dinned his message into the public
ear, day after day, week in week out ; he would
spiritualize politics, he would make the political
awakening in the country grow into a Vedantic
inquiry into the nature of its own truest essence and
reach its fulfilment in a self-realization of its own
infinite potentialities. To the scared eye of calculat-
ing reason it might appear that, to unarmed and
puny men and women, there is no other go except
tamely and abjectly to bear the “ slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune but even in this degenerate
world of ours a David is more than a match for a
Goliath ; faith can truly lift mountains and perform
miraculous feats. What was necessary, then ?
“ What is the one thing needful ? What is it that
has helped the older men who have gone to prison ?
What is it that has been their strength, that has
enabled them to stand against all temptations and
against all dangers and obstacles ? They have had
one and all of them consciously or unconsciously
one overmastering idea, one idea which nothing

SUKAT AND AFTER

can shake, and this was the idea that there is a
great Power at work to help India, and that we are
doing what it bids us.”^

Faith, then, was the primary thing ; selflessness
also was required ; as Sri Aurobindo remarked
categorically : “ this movement of Nationalism is
not guided by any self-interest, not at the heart of

it it is not, at the heart of it, a political self-

interest that we are pursuing. It is a religion which
we are trying to live. It is a religion by which we
are trying to realize God in the nation, in our fellow-
countrymen. We are trying to realize Him in the
three hundred millions of our people.

Faith, selflessness and courage, triune virtues
these that will help the country to realize itself ; these
must stir within and regulate the conduct of all
Nationalists ; and aspiring thus and ever so whole-
heartedly working, the three hundred millions will
soon discover that God Himself is working for
them and through them, in order to reveal Himself
anew to India and to the whole world !

A new music surely ; not statistics, not citations
from Burke and Mill and who not, not appeals to
British precedents like the Witenagemot and the
Magna Charta and collective responsibility, not
even a harking back to the French Revolution or the
American Declaration of Independence ; just an

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p. 33.

2. Ibid,, p. 36-

SRI AUROBiNUO

invocation to God and an exhortation to Indians to
consecrate themselves to the service of God, of
God in the Mother, — that’s all !

Baroda, Bombay, Poona, Nasik, Amraoti, Nag-
pur, wherever Sri Aurobindo went, he received a
royal welcome and everywhere people listened to
him ‘ ‘ with bated breath and whispering humbleness. ’ ’
In Nagpur, Sri Aurobindo addressed audiences of
several thousands ; Dr. Moonje translated the
speeches into Hindi ; and even peasants in large
numbers attended the meetings and received the
stirring message. As the Nagpur correspondent
wrote to the Bandemataram, " his (Sri Aurobindo’s)
saintly figure has impressed the masses as well as
the classes with such marvellous effectiveness, that
he is the sole subject of appreciative talk for the
latter part of this week.”^

Returning to Calcutta at last, Sri Aurobindo
continued to work with vigour and pertinacity.
Here too he was much in demand as a public
speaker. The themes were the same old themes, —
nationalism, swadeshi, self-help, arbitration, the
ethics of suffering, unselfish service, and the neces-
sity for reviving all that was good in Hinduism ;
but Sri Aurobindo deftly played inspiring variations
of the same, and every word sounded as a clarion
call.

I. The Bandemataram, February 9, 1908.
l6rj.

IP

SURAT ANJJ AtljuA

VI

In January 1908, Sri Aurobindo published a
series of editorial articles in the Bandemataram,
under the general title “ Death or Life,” empha-
sizing some of the ideas he repeatedly stressed in
his public speeches. The views expressed in
these articles were not unsimilar to those expressed
by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, especially in the
chapters entitled ‘‘ Phoenix ” and ” Organic Fila-
ments.” Destruction and creation are ever going
on together in this world. The future is in very
truth being formed in the present. The debacle
at Surat was but the necessary prelude to — or even
an indication of the throes of — an imminent rebirth.
Sri Aurobindo concluded this thoughtful series of
articles with this prophetic declaration ; " The

old organizations have to be reconstituted to adapt
themselves to the new surroundings. The death
complained of is only a transition. The burial
ground of the old Congress is, as the Saxon
phrase goes, only God’s-Acre out of which will
grow the real, vigorous, popular organization.”^

The Sural happenings are also the theme of a
satirical poem and a satirical drama^ that appeared
in the Bandemataram of the 26th January and of
the i6th and 23rd February respectively. The

1. The Bandemataram, Januar>' 12, 1908.

2. The poem and the drama were the work of Shyamsundar Chakravarti.

SRI AUROBINDO

verses “ supposed to be written by Alexander-de-
Convention during the unhappy abode in the Sleepy
Hollow of Surat” are in obvious imitation of
Cowper’s Alexander Selkirk and have plenty of bite
and vim ; the play, ” The Slaying of the Congress —
a Tragedy in Three Acts ” is, however, an infinitely
more damaging piece of satire. The first Act
opens in Calcutta, at the time of the Congress of
1906 : Dadabhai Naoroji, the President, introduces
to the assembled delegates the ” Lady Congress

Much have I laboured, toiled for many years
To see this glorious day. Our Lady Congress
Grown to a fair and perfect womanhood,

Who at Benares came of age, is now
With pomp and noble ceremony arrived
In this Calcutta to assume the charge
Of her own life into her own proper hands . . . . ^

Subsequent scenes are located in Bombay, Poona,
Bombay again, and, finally, Surat ; the principal
characters are, of course, Mehta, Tilak, Gokhale,
Surendranath, and Krishnaswami Aiyar ; there are
also symbolic abstractions like Congress, Demo-
cracy, Nagpur, and Surat. In the end, the Mehta
group are shown as succeeding in their endeavour to
” slay the Congress,” It is a clever, amusing, and
most interesting piece of work ; as one reads it today.

I. The Bandemataram, February 16, 1908,

t66

SURAT AND AFTER

one might find the satire a little bit too severe and
sweeping ; but one must remember that it was
written only about a month after the abortive
Surat session of the Congress.

VII

Platform- speech, editorial article, or patriotic
poetry, Sri Aurobindo knew the art of making most
of his medium ; and every week that passed found
him installed firmer than ever in the hearts of his
countrymen and countrywomen.

It may be difficult for those of us who reached
our early manhood in the twenties and thirties to
realize how exactly the men and women of an
earlier generation reacted to Sri Aurobindo’s views,
speeches, programmes and newspaper articles.
Only the facts can be stated : Sri Aurobindo did
indeed galvanize Bengal into a blaze of spirited and
high-souled endeavour ; he anticipated, to a very
considerable extent, some of Mahatma Gandhi's
methods of political action, notably passive resis-
tance ; and he did achieve the no mean feat of
rousing, if only for a little while, the slumbering
spiritual forces in the country. But it would be
wrong to assume that Sri Aurobindo’s political
standpoint was entirely pacifist, that he was opposed
in principle and in practice to all violence and that
he denounced terrorism, insurrection and violence
as entirely forbidden by the spirit and letter of the

SRI AUROuINDO

Hindu religion d The rule of confining political
action to passive resistance was adopted as the best
policy for the National Movement at that stage
and not as part of a gospel of Non-violence or
Ahimsa or Peace. Sri Aurobindo never concealed
his opinion that a nation is entitled to attain its
freedom by violence, if it can do so or if there is
no other way ; whether it should do so or not,
would depend on what under particular circum-
stances is the best policy, not on ethical considera-
tions of the Gandhian kind, Sri Aurobindo's
position and practice in this matter was the same as
Lokamanya Tilak’s and that of other Nationalist
leaders who were by no means Pacifists or worship-
pers of Ahimsa, Peace is part of the highest
ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least
psychological in its basis ; without a change in
human nature, it cannot come with any finality.
If attempted on any other basis like a mental prin-
ciple or the gospel of Ahimsa, it will fail, and even
may leave things worse than before.^

1. Sri Aurobindo has elaborated his ideas on the subject, generally,
in the fifth Chapter of the First Series of Essays on the Gita, where he
supports the Gita's idea of Dharma Yuddha and criticizes, though not
expressly, the Gandhian ideas of soul-force. He has given his support to
the Allies in the present World War and many of his disciples have joined
the Army as airmen, soldiers, doctors, electricians, etc.

2. Sri Aurobindo is no doubt in favour of an attempt to put down war by
international agreement and international force, — what is now contemplated
in the ‘‘ New Order,"— if that proves possible, but that would not be
Ahimsa, it would be a putting down of anarchic force by legal force, and
one cannot be sure that it would be permanent.

bURAT AND after

Nor was Sri Aurobindo wanting in an accom-
modating temper or in the ability to put forward
practical proposals for purposes of social amelior-
ation. He was prepared to do all in his power to
bring the two wings of the Congress under a com-
mon banner once again, so that the country might
express its strength through “ the united Congress
of the whole people.”^ He realized from the
outset the importance of organizing village samitis
and of carrying the gospel of swaraj through them
to the masses of the country. As regards the
rehabilitation of the village, Sri Aurobindo empha-
tically declared : “ If we are to survive as a nation,

we must restore the centres of strength which are
natural and necessary to our growth, and the
first of these, the basis of all the rest, the old founda-
tion of Indian life and the secret of Indian vitality,
is the self-dependent and self-sufficient village
organism. If we are to organize swaraj, we must
base it on the village. But we must, at the same
time, take care to avoid the mistake which did
much in the past to retard our national growth.
The village must not in our new national life be
isolated as well as self-sufficient, but must feel itself
bound up with the life of its neighbouring units,
living with them in a common group for common
purposes.”^

1. Speeches of Aurobtndo Chose, p. 37.

2. Ibid , pp. 69-70.

i6g

SRI AUROBINDO

But, while Sri Aurobindo was not blind to the
exigencies of practical politics nor to the importance
of village samitis and similar institutions, he con-
fined himself in the main to the stupendous gener-
alities on which alone all durable social and political
structures could be reared. Suffering was not a
thing to flee from, suffering was the proud badge
of our tribe ; suffering would ennoble us, purify
us, and awaken the slumbering soul within. In his
Baruipur speech, Sri Aurobindo detailed the well-
known parable of the two birds and drew from it
an elevating political lesson :

“We in India fell under the influence of the
foreigners’ maya which completely possessed our
souls. It was the maya of the alien rule, the
alien civilization, the powers and capacities
of the alien people who happen to rule over us.
These were as it were so many shackles that put
our physical, intellectual and moral life in bond-
age It is only through repression and suffer-

ing that maya can be dispelled and the bitter
fruit of Partition of Bengal administered by Lord
Curzon dispelled the illusion. We looked up
and saw that the brilliant bird sitting above was
none else but ourselves, our real and actual selves.
Thus we found Swaraj within ourselves and saw
that it was in our hands to discover and to realize
it.”i

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. 61-3,

170

SURAT AND AFTER

In his Kishoreganj speech, again, while dealing
with the practical problem of organizing village
samitis, Sri Aurobindo also laid stress on the basic
problem of “ Unity ” in the country :

“ Unity is of the heart and springs from love.
The foreign organism which has been living on
us, lives by the absence of this love, by division,
and it perpetuates the condition of its existence
by making us look to it as the centre of our lives
and away from our mother and her children. . . .
This drying up of the springs of mutual affection
is the cause which needs most to be removed.”^
Wise and candid words ! And they are as oppor-
tune today as they were over thirty-five years ago
when they were first uttered ; and alas ! as little
heeded today as they were then 1

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 7S-8,

CHAPTER TEN

ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR
I

Events were now moving swift to their pre-
ordained configuration and conclusion. Curzon
had divided Bengal and insulted and enraged a
great nation ; and, by a strange irony of circumstance,
Minto was now called upon to face the music.
“ Sedition ” was rampant, so thought the chaste
officers of the Government ; Brahmabandhab Up-
adhyaya, Bhupendranath Dutt, and others were
hauled up before the court and some of them were
awarded drastic sentences or expropriatory fines.
Upadhyaya himself died in the Campbell Hospital,
before the case against him had been concluded.
For the rest, printer or publisher or editor or con-
tributor, one was likely to be apprehended on the
slightest pretext and tried for sedition.

These endless trials and the heavy sentences
passed on the apprehended patriots seemed shocking
to John Morley himself, and on one occasion he
wrote to Minto in an outspoken manner :

“ I must confess to you that I am watching
with the deepest concern and dismay the thunder-
ing sentences that are being passed for sedition,

172

AaRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

etc. We must keep order, but excess of severity
is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is
the path to the bomb.” ^

Morley had correctly glimpsed the consequences
of “ excess of severity. ” Some hot-heads wished
to avenge the death of Upadhyaya by killing
Mr. Kingsford, the District Judge of Muzzaferpore,
who had previously ordered the flogging of a young
boy in the court. On the evening of April lo, 1908,
a bomb was thrown by two mere boys at the supposed
carriage of Mr. Kingsford ; as a matter of fact, it
really hit two wholly innocent people, the wife and
the daughter of a certain Mr. Pringle-Kennedy.
Whatever the provocation, the whole thing was
utterly stupid and futile, as all such activities
ultimately are. As Shyamsundar wrote editorially
in the Bandemataram :

“ Outrages of this kind have absolutely no
sanction in our ancient tradition and culture ....
Moderatism is imitation of British constitution-
alism, this form of so-called Extremism, wherever
it may be found to exist in this country, is imita-
tion of European anarchism ; and both are
equally different from and absolutely foreign to
the spirit of the Nationalism which, though
opposed by one and occasionally mistaken for the
other, is bound in the long run to carve out the

1. Life and Times of C. R. Das, p. 58 (Footnote),

173

SRI AUROBINDO

future of India, and realize the eternal destiny of
her ancient and composite people.

But — ^most unfortunately under the circumstances —
the Government lost their balance and sense of
proportion and started arresting persons right and
left. The miniature bomb-factory itself was soon
enough located, and Barindra Kumar Ghose, suppos-
ed to be the chief brain of the revolutionary
organization, was promptly arrested along with most
of his associates. The situation was ominous and
pregnant with sinister possibilities ; and as the
Bandemataram wrote editorially, it was the merest
affectation to deny that the Muzzaferpore outrage
had “created a most critical situation in the country.’’^
It was, perhaps, not wholly unnatural that the
panic-stricken authorities should have suspected
that Sri Aurobindo — ^wasn't he the elder brother of
Barindra Kumar Ghose ? — also was somehow or
other connected with the revolutionary organization
and the bomb-factory. Orders were therefore issued
for his arrest also. Accordingly, on May 5, 1908,
at about 5 a.m. the Superintendent, the Inspector
and other police officers “ entered Aurobindo’ s
bedroom, and, on opening his eyes, he saw them
standing round. Perhaps, he thought himself in the
grip of a nightmare, gazing on apparitions in the
half-light of dawn. However, he was not left in

1. The Bandemataram, May lo, 1908 (Weekly, Edition).

2. Ibid.

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ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

suspense long, for he was arrested in bed and hand-
cuffed After securing Aurobindo, his bedroom

was searched. ‘ Search ’ is not the word for it. It
was turned inside out. The ransacking went on for
three hours . . . . ”^ Sri Aurobindo himself has given
a vivid account of his arrest and his subsequent
prison experiences in his Bengali book, Kara-kahini.
We learn from it that it was from his sister, Srimati
Sarojini, who ran to his bedroom in a frightened
condition, that he learned about the arrival of the
police officers. As a result of the search, the officers
found a number of essays, poems, letters, etc.,
which they took away from the house.

The arrest of Sri Aurobindo — and not alone the
fact of it but also the manner of it — ’Created a great
sensation in the whole country. The Amrita Bazaar
Patrika asked editorially But why were they
(Aurobindo and others) pounced upon in this
mysterious manner, handcuffed,^ and then dragged
before the Police Commissioner ? Where was the

necessity for this outrage ? It served no other

purpose than that of wantonly outraging public
feeling.”^ Besides Sri Aurobindo and Barindra
Kumar Ghose, thirty-four others also were rounded
up in connection with the Muzzaferpore outrage,

I The Bandemataram, May lo, 1908 (Reporter'? Account)

2. As a matter of fact, Sil Aurobindo was not handcuffed, but tied
with a rope ; this was taken off on the protest of Bhupen Bose, the Congress
Moderate leader.

3, Quoted in the Bandemataram, May ro, igo8.

SRI AUKOBINUO

the bomb-factory at Manicktolla, and the supposed
wide-spread revolutionary conspiracy of which these
were apparently but startling symptoms.

Produced before Mr. F. L. Halliday, Commis-
sioner of Police at Lai Bazaar, Sri Aurobindo
reserved his statement ; Mr. Nolini Kanta Gupta^
stated that he “ was oblivious of the reason for which
he was charged.” When they were produced later
before Mr. T. Thornhill, Chief Presidency Magis-
trate, the prosecution tried to make capital out of the
fact that Sri Aurobindo was one of the proprietors
of the garden where the bombs had been manufac-
tured. Mr. Thornhill transferred the case to
Alipur. The prisoners also, including Sri Aurobindo,
were sent to Alipur and lodged in Jail there.

II

The " Alipur Case,” as it henceforth came to be
universally called, was the talk of the whole country
for the next twelve months or so. It was known
that the prosecution were straining every nerve to
secure the conviction of Sri Aurobindo and thereby
to cast a stain on the white flower of utterly blameless
life he had so far held aloft through fair weather and
foul weather alike . The eminent criminal lawyer,
the late Mr. Eardley Norton, then at the height of
his powers and reputation, was engaged by the

I. Mr. Nolini Kanta Gupta is now the Secretary of the Sri Aurobindo
Asr^im,

ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

Government to conduct the prosecution. It was
therefore necessary to organize the defence of Sri
Aurobindo on an adequate enough basis. His
sister, Srimati Sarojini, appealed in the following
terms to Sri Aurobindo’ s countrymen :

" I know all my countrymen do not hold the
same political opinions as he (Sri Aurobindo).
But I feel some delicacy in saying that probably
there are few Indians who do not appreciate his
great attainments, his self-sacrifice, his single-
minded devotion to the country’s cause, and the
high spirituality of his character. These em-
bolden me, a woman, to stand before every son
and daughter of India for help to defend a brother,
— my brother and theirs too.”^

The appeal — ^which even to read today creates a
tremor in our whole being, down to the inmost
depths — ^was eloquently supported by the Bengalee,
the Amrita Bazar Patrika, and other papers.
Response to the appeal was not very slow in coming ;
and it came from the most unexpected places. A
blind beggar-— all honour to him ! — gave Srimati
Sarojini one rupee out of the alms he had assiduously
collected, perhaps over a period of a month or even
a year ; a poor student, by denying himself his daily
tiffin, gave a modest contribution ; the Poona
Sarvajanik Sabha bestirred itself to make collections
for the Defence Fund.^ And other individuals and

1. The BandemaUiram, June igoR.

2, Ibid , July 2(h 1008.

177

SRI AUROBINUO

agencies also interested themselves in making proper
arrangements for the defence of Sri Aurobindo.

While all this no doubt gave an indication of the
amount of good-will in the country towards Sri
Aurobindo, the actual sum of money that was
collected from week to week was by no means
satisfactory. After two months, hardly Rs, 33,000
had been collected !

Meanwhile the preliminary trial was going on in
Alipur before Mr, L. Birley, the officiating District
Magistrate. The trial commenced on the 19th May,
1908. At the outset, ball was refused to Sri Auro-
bindo. Mr. Kingsford, the intended victim of the
Muzzaferpore outrage, being summoned to give
evidence, said somewhat complacently : “I was
Chief Presidency Magistrate, Calcutta, from August
1904 to March 1908. I had to try many sedition
cases. . . .1 acquitted as many as I convicted.”

The preliminary trial was a long one. When
Sri Aurobindo was brought before Mr. Birley on
the nth June, ” a black ring was distinctly visible
round Aurobindo Babu’s eyes”^ ; two days later —
Aurobindo Babu laughed heartily while conversing
with his pleaders, only he looked a bit paler than
before. And so with interesting vicissitudes the
trial dragged on ; in the early part of August, Sri
Aurobindo was ill in jaiP ; and at last, on the 19th

1. The Bandemataram, June 14, 1908.

2. Ibid., June 14, igo8,

3. Ibid., August 16, 1908; vide sub-leader on "Very 111 in Jail,”

178

ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

August, Mr. Birley framed charges and committed
to sessions Sri Aurobindo and the others.

Srimati Sarojini Devi had collected by then, as
we saw above, only Rs. 23,000 ; she therefore appeal-
ed to her countrymen for another Rs. 37,000, since
the defence costs were computed to exceed
Rs. 60,000.

Ill

What were Sri Aurobindo's feelings when he
found himself checkmated by this seemingly in-
explicable bolt from the blue, which put an abrupt
end to his political career ? What did he think
and feel, how did he bear the rigours of the im-
prisonment, — the bad food, the inadequate clothes,
the lack of books and journals, the lack of light and
free air, and, above all, the strain of boredom and
the creeping solitariness of the gloomy cell ? Were
there regrets, recriminations, or expostulations ?

Sri Aurobindo has answered our questions, in
language that often acquires wings and wafts us to
the seventh heaven of radiant ecstasy and hope
incommensurable, in his Kara-kahini and also in his
Uttarpara speech, delivered a year later. We shall
therefore answer our questions in his own words :

"When I was arrested and hurried to the
Lai Bazar hajat, I was shaken in faith for a while,
for I could not look into the heart of His intention.
Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried out
in my heart to Him, ‘ What is this that has hap-

12

179

SRI AUROBINOO

pened to me ? I believed that I had a mission to
work for the people of my country and until that
work was done, I should have Thy protection.
Why then am I here and on such a charge ’ ? A
day passed and a second day and a third, when a
voice came to me from within, ‘ Wait and see. ’
Then I grew calm and waited ; I was taken from
Lai Bazar to Alipur and was placed for one month
in a solitary cell apart from other men. There I
waited day and night for the voice of God witliin
me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn
what I had to do. In this seclusion, the earliest
realization, the first lesson came to me. I re-
membered then that a month or more before my
arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all
activity, to go into seclusion and to look into
myself, so that I might enter into closer communion
with Him.

On that occasion, however, he had proved weak and
had refused to listen to that voice ; politics and
poetry were too dear to him then, and he could not
give them up. Had he not, indeed, told Yogi Lele
that he, Sri Aurobindo, would follow the path of
Yoga only if it did not interfere with his politics and
his poetry ?‘^ So long as he was a free man, Sri
Aurobindo would not break the bonds himself —
and therefore God had to do it for him, though in

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 88 -q.

2 . Dilip, Account of his Interview with Sri Aurobindo in Tirthankar,

ASRAMVAS Ai ALIPUR

His own way ! God seemed now to whisper to Sri
Aurobindo : “I have had another thing for you to
do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach
you what you could not learn for yourself and to
train you for my work.

Meanwhile Sri Aurobindo had been permitted
by the authorities to send for books, and thus it was
that he started reading the Bhagavad Gita. “ His
strength entered into me and I was able to do the
sadhana of the Gita.”^ Sri Aurobindo had already
tried over a long period to apprehend the true in-
wardness and glory of the Indian religion and
spiritual tradition, Sanatana Dharma, and to accept
it in its entirety ; now it all became, not so much
a matter of intellectual comprehension, but a fact of
intimate realization ; he thus saw by direct illumina-
tion the eternal truth of ” what Sri Krishna demanded
of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire
to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire,
to do work for Him without the demand for fruit,
to renounce self-will and become a passive and
faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal
heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success
and failure, yet not to do His work negligently."
The constant reading and re-reading of the Giki,
ceaseless meditation on its undying truths, made it

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghnse, p go

2. Ibid,, p. 90.

3. Ibid., pp. 90-1.

iSt

SRI ATJROBINDO

possible for Sri Aurobindo to seize in an act of
undivided attention "the core of the Gita’s teaching’’;
the Gita seemed to tell him in friendly, yet un-
ambiguous and peremptory accents:

" Slay then desire ; put away attachment to
the possession and enjoyment of the outwardness
of things. Separate yourself from all that comes
to you as outward touches and solicitations, as
objects of the mind and senses. Learn to bear
and reject all the rush of the passions and to
remain securely seated in your inner self even
while they rage in your members, until at last
they cease to affect any part of your nature. Bear
and put away similarly the forceful attacks and
even the slightest insinuating touches of joy and
sorrow. Cast away liking and disliking, destroy
preference and hatred, root out shrinking and
repugnance. Let there be a calm indifference to
these things and to all the objects of desire in all
your nature. Look on them with the silent and
tranquil regard of an impersonal spirit.’’^

The doubts — the few that had persisted yet in prison
— ^were now a thing of the past ; Sri Aurobindo’ s soul
already experienced a calm and rich lucidity and —
lo and behold ! — ^Sri Aurobindo opened his eyes,
and saw :

" I looked at the jail that secluded me from
men and it was no longer by its high walls that I

T. Essays nn the Gita, II, p. 484.

l8n

AbRAMVAS at ALtPUR

was imprisoned ; no, it was Vasudeva who sur-
rounded me. I walked under the branches of the
tree in front of my celi,^ but it was not the tree,
I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom
I saw standing there and holding over me His
shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very
grating that did duty for a door, and again I saw
Vasudeva, It was Narayana who was guarding
and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the
coarse blankets that were given me for a couch
and felt the arm of Sri Krishna around me, the
arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the
first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked
at the prisoners in jail, the thieves, the murderers,
the swindlers, and as I looked at them, I saw
Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these
darkened souls and misused bodies.”^
Incarceration, then, far from breaking Sri Aurobindo,
only re-made him in the hallowed mould of God’s
desire ; the prison did not cramp his movements,
but proved rather a temple of liberation and fulfil-
ment ; even in confinement he experienced neither
peril nor shortcoming, but only the soul’s utter joy
and freedom ; and even when he inhabited but an
area of forty-five square feet, he sensed the splen-
dours of the Infinite and learned to lose himself in
the “ vasts of God.”

I. After a period of solitary confinement, Sri Aurobindo had been
permitted to walk outside his cell for half an hour in the mornings and
evenings.

3. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. 92-3.

183

SKI AUROBINDO

IV

While thus all was felicity within, the world
outside continued to be agitated by the imprisonment
of Sri Aurobindo and the protracted and sensational
trial that followed it. The case commenced in the
Sessions Court in October 1908. Mr. Beachcroft,
the District and Sessions Judge, who tried the case,
had been with Sri Aurobindo in Cambridge, and
had stood second in Greek, while Sri Aurobindo had
stood first. He had now the by no means pleasant
task of " trying ” the chained and handcuffed Sri
Aurobindo on a charge of waging war against the
King. Mr. Eardley Norton appeared for the
prosecution (who obviously didn’t want to take any
chances whatsoever) ; after the first few days,
Chittaranjan Das — ^the “ Desabandhu ” of a later
day — appeared for Sri Aurobindo. Srimati Sarojini
Devi and her friends thus succeeded in avoiding the
" sharks ” of the legal profession and found in Ghit-
taranjan a true ” Defender of the Faith.” At that
time, Chittaranjan was known to be a rising criminal
lawyer, a sensitive poet, and, above all, an unflinching
idealist and an adoring son and servant of the Mother.
He came, — and the prospect brightened at once all
around !

Chittaranjan, although he was not then the power
in the legal world that he became soon after, gave
his whole heart and soul to the organization of the
defence, and for the next six months dedicated
himself to the sacred task of defending Sri Aurobindo.

184

ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

We learn that " in this case 206 witnesses were
examined, 4,000 documents were filed, and the
exhibits, consisting of bombs, revolvers, ammuni-
tion, detonators, fuses, poisonous acids, and other
explosive materials, numbered 5,000.”^ Poet, idea-
list, patriot, Ghittaranjan enthusiastically came to
his brother poet’s rescue, put away from him " all
other thoughts and abandoned all his practice ”
and “ sat up half the night day after day for months
and broke his health — ^and all to save Sri Auro-
bindo ; and he did succeed in saving him. But Sri
Aurobindo knew all the time that, though his friend
Ghittaranjan was the instrument, Vasudeva alone
was the prime mover and doer !

It is not necessary here to go over the whole
ground once again. Well, the prosecution — ^though
they sought to move literally heaven and earth —
failed to prove their case against Sri Aurobindo.
Asked by the Gourt, Sri Aurobindo said that he
would leave the case entirely to his Lawyers ; he
himself did not wish to make any statement or
answer the court's questions. The case for the defence
was that it was perfectly true that Sri Aurobindo had
taught the people of India the meaning and the
message of national independence ; if that in itself
was a crime, Sri Aurobindo would willingly plead
guilty to the charge. There was no need to bring

1. Life and Times of C. R. Das, p. 59.

2. Speeches of Aurofaindo Ghose, p. 96.

SKI AUKUBINDO

in witnesses to prove this particular charge ; Sri
Aurobindo readily and gladly would admit it and he
would be willing to suffer to the uttermost for
having propagated the message and elucidated the
meaning of national independence. But let not
the prosecution charge Sri Aurobindo with things
he had never even dreamed about, which were
wholly repugnant to his entire philosophy of life and
conduct ; he had taught the people of India how
the ideals of democracy and national independence
could be translated into realities in terms of Vedan-
tic self-discipline and self-realization. He had
never had any part or lot in the terrorist movement,
he had never countenanced it, he had never ap-
proved of the actions of the people who had implicat-
ed themselves in the movement. He was a Vedantic
Nationalist, not a revolutionary terrorist !

Ghittaranjan’s speech for the defence was spread
over eight days and it was an eloquent epic of
forensic art. What was Sri Aurobindo’s philoso-
phy of action, — what was it in the individual and
national planes ? Just this, affirmed Chittaranjan :
Vedantism. Sri Aurobindo was not a politician
in the ordinary. Western sense, but one to whom
politics was as spiritual an experience as was religion
itself. Chittaranjan continued ;

“As in the case of individuals you cannot
reach your God with extraneous aid, but you
must make an effort — ^that supreme effort —
yourself before you can realize the God within you ;

t86

AbKAMVAb A'r ALIPUR

SO also with a nation. It is by itself that a nation
must grow ; a nation must attain its salvation by
its unaided effort. No foreigner can give you
that salvation. It is within your own hands to
revive that spiiit of nationality. That is the
doctrine of nationality which Aurobindo has
preached throughout, and that was to be done
not by methods which are against the traditions

of the country the doctrines he preached

are not doctrines of violence but doctrines of
passive resistance. It is not bombs, but suffer-
ing He says, believe in yourself ; no one

attains salvation who does not believe in himself.
Similarly, he says, in the case of a nation.”^

How Chittaranjan proved that the letter purported
to have been written by Barindra Kumar Ghose to
Sri Aurobindo was no more than a forgery — " as
clumsy as those Piggott had got up to incriminate
Parnell after the murder of Lord Cavendish in
PhcEnix Park — is among the most thrilling
denouements in the history of Indian criminal cases.

Having thus ably demolished what had initially
appeared to be a piece of damning evidence against
Sri Aurobindo, Chittaranjan, in his peroration,
made a fervent appeal to Mr. Beachcroft the Judge
and the two Assessors in the case ;

“ My appeal to you is this, that long after the
controversy will be hushed in silence, long after

1 . Lrfe and Times of C. R. Das, p. 6z.

2. Ibid., p. 62.

187

SlU AUROBINDO

this turmoih the agitation will have ceased, long
after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon
as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of
nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long
after he is dead and gone, his words will be
echoed and re-echoed, not only in India, but
across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say
that the man in his position is not only standing
before the bar of this court, but before the bar of
the High Court of History.”^

Prophetic words — and more than prophetic words !
On April 13, 1909, the two Assessors returned a
unanimous verdict of “ Not guilty.” Nearly a
month later, accepting the Assessors’ verdict, Mr.
Beachcroft acquitted Sri Aurobindo. But many
of the others among the thirty-six accused were
awarded various sentences, though it is not to our
purpose to follow their fortunes any further.

V

While still in the Alipur jail (the Government
Hotel at Alipur, as Sri Aurobindo once humorously
called it), 2 he had composed a few poems revealing
the strength of his new-found faith. The true path
that God wishes His devotee to tread is not the
proverbial bed of roses ; it is studded with sharp

1. Life and Times of C, R. Das, pp. 59-64.

2. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p. 306.

ASRAMVAS AT ALIPUR

thorns and steely brambles ; it is punctuated by the
shocks of circumstance. He ever tells His devotee
in no ambiguous terms the hazards that he should
bravely face and overcome :

I sport with solitude here in my regions,

Of misadventure have made me a friend.

Who would live largely ? Who would live freely ?

Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.

I am the lord of tempest and mountain,

I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.

Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.^

In another poem, The Mother of Dreams, written
in long lines of linked sweetness and interior double-
rhymes, Sri Aurobindo’s Muse rides triumphantly
on the crest of a complicated rhythm and achieves
a memorable articulation in eloquent praise of the
Mother — “ the home-of-all, the womb-of-all,” in
Hopkins’s pregnant phrase — who in myriad ways
manifests Herself to terrestrial men and women.
What visions are these that visit us as we are lapped
in grey, soft, and restful slumber ? What sights,
are these, what sounds are these, what are these
images, what is this bliss profound, — ^what are these
that thus implicate us in their grandeur and impene-
trable mystery ? Sri Aurobindo’s imagination and
his spiritual fervour weave a velvet magic about
these meandering and soul-enchanting lines ; the

i.Colleckd Poems aiid Plays, I, p. 121.

189

SRl AUkOBlNDO

poem is itself a dream world of incomprehensible
beauty and felicity. One must read and chanty the
whole poem slowly and reverently—for truly is it
endowed with something of the mantra sakti of the
revealed word— and then only one will be able to
gain entrance into the deathless world of its making.
We can but quote the concluding lines here, as
inspired a piece of utterance as any in the whole
body of Sri Aurobindo’s poetry :

Open the gate where thy children wait in thy world of a

beauty undarkened.

High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied
Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him ;

Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit

of immortal sweetness ;

I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have heard
the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands

cannot master ;

Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the
Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster

and faster.

For thou art she whom we first can see when wc pass the

bounds of the mortal.

There at the gates of the heavenly slates thou hast planted
thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.

From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and
the fugitive lights that delude us ;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made ; sped by thy
hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice

for ever.

IQO

ASRAMVAS Al ALIPTJR

Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass,
then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to

the peak of divine endeavourT

From the fullness of such poetic revelation, it is
sacrilege to detract anything, — and mere exegesis
must only end in detraction. Suffice for us to know
that Sri Aurobindo had become, while in the Alipur
jail, the sort of man who could peep into Infinity
and render its untranslatable wonders in such
streams of vibrant melody. Sri Aurobindo — and
this alone matters to us — ^has safely and purely
come through the devouring coils of adverse cir-
cumstance ; he has baffled the Everlasting No and
affirmed the Everlasting Yea ; he has ceased to be a
“traveller between life and death" and become
instead a Pilgrim of Eternity !

I. Collected Poems and Plavt, 11 , p, iza.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

KARMAYOGIN

I

Sri Aurobindo had spent one whole year in jail,
— in Alipur most of the time ; but it had, after all,
been a year of asramvas, not a year of bleak or painful
incarceration ; the jail had proved no cage of con-
finement, but veritably a Yogasram where Purushot-
tama was his friend and guru, his companion and
master. Thus had his "enemies,” by sending him
to prison, only opened to him the door of felicity.
And it had always been like that ! The highest good
had invariably come to Sri Aurobindo from his
seeming " enemies and now he had no enemy in
the world P

Emancipated already in his mind and his soul,
Sri Aurobindo was now at long last free in a strictly
material sense as well. Was he proud of his
success, exultant, or triumphant ? Not likely !
Bengal~and India — ^had changed somewhat during
the twelve months he had spent in jail. His friends
and his co-workers were taken far away from him,

1, Summarized from Sri Aurohindo’s Kara-kahini.

192

jnARMAYOGIN

scattered by the virulent blasts of repression and
deportation. In vain Morley nursed the worm of
discontent within his own heart ; in vain the worm
insisted on muttering unpleasantly to his ear :

" That’s the Russian argument ; by packing
off train-loads of suspects to Siberia, we’ll terrify
the anarchists out of their wits, and all will come
out right. That policy did not work out
brilliantly in Russia, and did not save Russia
from a Duma, the very thing that the Trepoffs
and the rest of the ‘ offs ’ ' deprecated and detest-
ed.’

But the deportations continued still and the
ranks of the nationalists thinned almost to nothing-
ness. The very mantra of Bandemataram was but
fitfully, and not so lustily, heard. As Sri Aurobindo
remarked in the course of the Uttarpara speech ;

” .... now that I have come out, I find all
changed. One who always sat by my side and
was associated in my work is a prisoner in
Burma . I looked round when I came out,
I looked round for those to whom I had been
accustomed to look for counsel and inspiration.
I did not find them. There was more than that.
When I went to jail, the whole country was alive
with the cry of Bandemataram, alive with the
hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men

1 , Life niid Times of C R. Das, p. 71

2. The leferencc is to Lokamanya Tilak, who was then a prisoner at
Mandalay.

193

SRI AUKOBINDO

who had newly risen out of degradation. When
I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there
was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the
country and men seemed bewildered ; for instead
of God’s bright heaven full of the vision of the
future that had been before us, there seemed to
be overhead a leaden sky from which human
thunders and lightnings rained.”^

It was enough to crack a small man’s faith ; but
Sri Aurobindo was not a small man, he contained
multitudes ; he knew, not as the result of close
ratiocination only, but even as a matter of unshak-
able faith, that that too was but God manifesting
Himself in His own way for achieving His own
purposes in His own good time. Sri Aurobindo
knew it all, he was sure of it all, and he wanted
others also to share his faith and strength.

Returning from Alipur to Calcutta, Sri Auro-
bindo hurled himself once more into ” divine
endeavour,” stern endeavour in the name of, and
on behalf of, the Divine. He spoke in public
meetings, he issued weighty statements, he wrote
important articles ; he did the very things he had
done before, before his imprisonment and trial, —
but in the seeming similarity was there a vital
difference as well. Sri Aurobindo would now be a
willing and plastic instrument in the hands of the
Divine ; he would no doubt still pursue his political

I Speeche'i of Aurobindo Ghnie, pp 8 4-5,

194

jn.ARMAyoCrIN

and other vocations, but without malice and
without rancour and without the least taint of selfish-
ness. Hundred-limbed repression might prevail for
the nonce, but it should not terrify the just ; what,
after all, was repression ? Sri Aurobindo answers :

"We were building an edifice to be the
temple of our Mother’s worship .... It was then
that He came down upon us. He flung Himself
upon the building we had raised. He shook
the roof with His mighty hands, and part of the
building was displaced and ruined. Why has
He done this ?

Repression is nothing but the hammer of God
that is beating us into shape so that we may be
moulded into a mighty nation and an instrument
for His work in the world. We are iron upon
His anvil and the blows are showering upon us,
not to destroy, but to recreate. Without suffer-
ing there can be growth.”^

Had not Sri Aurobindo seen through the jailer and
the jail, the Judge and the Assessors, the lawyers on
either side, Mr. Norton and Chittaranjan, the
witnesses and the visitors, and seen behind them
all but one visage, one form, one manifestation ?
Temporary set-backs should not frighten the true
sadhaka in the Temple of Patriotism ; set-backs
are quite natural, set-backs are inevitable in a high
endeavour like theirs ; but Indians as men, and India

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, pp. I33-4'

SRI AUKOBINUU

as their nation, will prevail nevertheless in the end.
If our cause is just and if our means are not
unworthy of our cause, nothing can stand for ever
against the realization of our aims :

“Our object, our claim is that we .shall not
perish as a nation, but live as a nation. Any
authority that goes against this object will dash
itself against the eternal throne of justice — it will
dash itself against the laws of nature which are
the laws of God, and be broken to pieces.’’^

11

Finding that the Nationalist Party in Bengal
had all but disintegrated, Sri Aurobindo started
publishing two weekly papers, the Knrmayogin in
English and the Dharma in Bengali, with a view
to organizing the party on efficient lines and educat-
ing public opinion. It is important to remember
that, although he was offered the editorship of the
Bengalee and although he was earnestly requested
by some people to re-start the Bandemataram, Sri
Aurobindo wished rather to break fresh ground by
conducting journals entirely his own, the Dharma
and the Karmayogin. The very names are signi-
ficant and reveal the mind of their editor like an
open book. His aim now was no more party
politics ; it was rather the dissemination of the

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p. 140.

KARMAYOGIN

principles of Sanatana Dharma ; it was rather the
hourly practice of the Karmayoga taught by the
Lord in the Gita.

In the first issue, the Karmayogin is described
as “ a weekly Review of National Religion, Liter-
ature, Science, Philosophy, etc.”; the contributors
are ; ” Srijut Aurobindo Ghose and others the

cover illustration is of the Chariot, with Arjuna
and Sri Krishna seated in it ; and the motto of the
journal is, of course, the Gita vakya, “ Yoga is skill
in works.” Sri Aurobindo editorially explained
the “ policy ” of the paper as follows :

” The Karmayogin will be more of a national
review than a weekly newspaper. We shall
notice current events only as they evidence, help,
affect or resist the growth of national life and the
development of the soul of the nation. ... if
there is no creation, there must be disintegration ;
if there is no advance and victory, there must be
recoil and defeat.”

And what is Karmayoga but ” the application of
Vedanta and Yoga to life ”? The paper would
seek to explain how Karmayoga may be practised
in the daily life of the nation by one and all.

The early issues of the Karmayogin published
Sri Aurobindo’s English translations of the Isha,
Kena and Katha Upanishads ; poems like Who, Baji
Prabhou, Epiphany, The Birth of Sin, and An Image
appeared in other issues ; likewise the paper gave
Sri Aurobindo’s . beautiful renderings of Kalidasa's

197

SRI AUROBINJDO

Ritusamhara and Bankim Chandra’s great novel,
Anandamath — the latter, however, was not complet-
ed, only thirteen chapters appearing in the Karma-
yogin ; finally, there appeared serially in the same
paper valuable and constructive contributions like
A System of National Education, The Brain of India,
The National Value of Art and The Ideal of the
Karmayogin. In some of the later issues appeared
a series of remarkable, Landor-like, Conversations
of the Dead — Dinshaw, Perizade ; Turiu, Uriu ; and
Two Souls in Pitri-lok. In the last of the three
conversations, Sri Aurobindo makes the Souls in
Pitri-lok say : The sorrows of the world call us ;
we’ll return to the earth ; we will re-establish in it
the reign of joy and beauty and harmony !

But politics and controversy, too, frequently
figured in the Karmayogin. Papers like the Bengalee
and the Indian Social Reformer had chosen to ridicule
Sri Aurobindo’s Uttarpara Speech. What, Vasu-
deva appear and speak — actually speak !— to an
" under- trial ” prisoner ? Impossible and alto-
gether improbable ! The fourth issue of the
Karmayogin gave a balanced and detailed rejoinder
to these immaculate rationalists of Bombay and
Calcutta — a reply that is worth reading even today.
Again, when the late Gopal Krishna Gokhale
made a speech in Poona in connection with the
murders of Curzon Wylie and Lalcaca, the Karma-
yogin came out with a slashingly sarcastic editorial,
which concluded with these scintillating words ;

198

xJ^RMAYOGIN

“ He (Gokhale) publishes himself now as the
righteous Bibhishan who, with the Sugrives,
Angads, and Hanumans of Madras and Allah-
abad, has gone to join the Avatar of Radical
absolutism in the India Office, and ourselves as
the Rakshasa to be destroyed by this Holy
Alliance.”

Sri Aurobindo, like all his countrymen, did not
fail to recognise the finer elements in Gokhale’ s
mind and character ; he described the Poona leader in
his Kumartuli speech as “ one who had served
and made sacrifices for the country”^ ; but when he
denounced the ideals and the actions of the Na-
tionalists, when he said that ” the ideal of inde-
pendence was an ideal which no sane man could
hold,” when he described the people who advocated
the peaceful methods of passive resistance as “ men
who, out of cowardice, do not speak out the thought
that is in their hearts,” then it became incumbent
upon Sri Aurobindo to accept the challenge and
enter the fray. In both his College Square and
Kumartuli speeches, Sri Aurobindo replied to
Gokhale and incidentally went into the implications
of the policy of Passive Resistance advocated by
the Nationalists :

“ This was a very dangerous teaching which
Mr. Gokhale introduced into his speech, that the
ideal of independence — ^whether we call it Swaraj

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, p. 21 1.

100

SRI AUROBINDO

or autonomy or Colonial Self-Government, be-
cause these two things in a country circumstanced
like India meant in practice the same — cannot be

achieved by peaceful means He has told

the ardent hearts which cherish this ideal of
independence, and are determined to strive
towards it, that their ideal can only be achieved
by violent means. If any doctrine can be
dangerous, if any teacher can be said to have
uttered words dangerous to the peace of the
country, it is Mr. Gokhale himself. We have
told the people that there is a peaceful means of
achieving independence in whatever form we
aspire to it. We have said that by self-help, by
passive resistance, we can achieve it ... . Passive
resistance means two things. It means first that
in certain matters we shall not co-operate with the
Government of this country until it gives us
what we consider our rights. Secondly, if we
are persecuted, if the plough of repression is
passed over us, we shall meet it, not by violence,
but by suffering, by passive resistance, by lawful
means. We have not said to our young men,
" when you are repressed, retaliate we have
said, " suffer ”. . . . We are showing the people
of this country in passive resistance the only way
in which they can satisfy their legitimate aspiration
without breaking the law and without resorting
to violence.

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 194-7.

'TOO

ivAi-iMA.YUGlN

Meanwhile, the Minto-Morley Reforms were
in the air and with his intimate knowledge of the
British people and their wares he had little doubt
that the Reforms belonged to the category of
" Brummagem goods’’^; they would only throw
'' an apple of fresh discord among them”^, they
were hollow and pretentious, and “ this offer of
conciliation in one hand and the pressure of repres-
sion in the other was a dangerously double-edged
policy. As the late Mr. S. Srinivasa Iyengar
pointed out, nearly twenty years later on the floor
of the Central Legislative Assembly, “ In the one
hand there is the sugar plum and in the other there
is repression. Sri Aurobindo therefore rightly
insisted that the Reforms were a mockery and a
trap and that the co-operation expected from the
people was not true co-operation but merely a
parody of the same.^

What, then, must the people do ? In his ” Open
Letter to My Countrymen,” dated July 1909, Sri
Aurobindo discussed with boldness and clarity the
major problems facing the country and outlined a
six-point programme : persistence, with a strict
regard to law, in a peaceful policy of self-help and

1 Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p. 209

2. Ibid., p, 210.

3. Ibid., p. 214.

4 The present vvrilei's S Srinivasa Iyengar, the Story of a Decade of
Indian Politics, p 74.

5. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, p. 200.

'’OT

SRI AUKOBI 1 >JJJO

passive resistance ; " No control, no co-operation ”
with the Government ; a rapprochement with the
Moderates wherever possible and the reconstitution
of an united Congress ; revival of the Boycott
movement on an effective basis ; extension of the
programme to other Provinces and ultimately to
the whole country ; organization of a system of
co-operation which will not contravene the law and
will yet enable workers to proceed with the task of
self-help and national efficiency.^

Ill

Earnest and serious, serene and self-possessed,
Sri Aurobindo went through the daily business of
his life as if it were all a field for the practice of Yoga,
as if indeed “ all Life is Yoga.” But occasionally
he gave vent to his irritation, and passages of humour
or sarcasm resulted. Thus about a certain curfew
order :

” It appeared that we were peaceful citizens
until sunset, but after sunset we turned into
desperate characters, — ^well, he was told, even
half-an-hour before sunset ; apparently even the
srm could not be entirely trusted to keep us
straight. We had, it seems, stones in our
pockets to throw at the police and some of us,
perhaps, dangle bombs in our chadders.”^

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 249-50.
3 . Ibid., pp. iis-6.

OOO.

X'.ARMAVOGIN

Speaking on another occasion, Sri Aurobindo thus
described the " resourcefulness ” and the imagin-
ative flights of the police :

there was the imagination of a very
highly imaginative police which saw hidden
behind the lathi the bomb. Now nobody ever
saw the bombs. But the police were quite
equal to the occasion ; they thought there might
be bombs. And what if there were not ? Their
imagination was quite equal to realizing any
bomb that could not be materialized .... Our
efficient police have always shown a wonderful
ability. Generally when a dacoity is committed,
the police are nowhere near .... They only come
up when the dacoity is long over and say, ‘ Well,
this is the work of the Nationalist volunteers.’

In his Kumartuli speech, again, Sri Aurobindo
described with playful irony his varied “ friends ” —
the Hare Street friend, the Police, the Madras
friend — ^and replied to their “friendly” suggestions.
The Madras friend — the Indian Patriot — -had advised
Sri Aurobindo to give up politics and take to San-
nyasa ; the police advised him not to open his
mouth “ too much the Hare Street friend advised
Sri Aurobindo to devote himself to literature and
religion, and not to make speeches on Swadeshi
and Boycott. Sri Aurobindo twitted the last friend
with the bland reply :

j. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, pp. 175-6.

20 .-^

SRI AUROBlNOO

“ He (Sri Aurobindo) was devoting himself to
literature and religion. He was writing, as he
wrote before, on Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that
was a form of literature. He was speaking on
Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that was part of his
religion.”^

And yet Sri Aurobindo was forced to realize that
the country, as a whole, was not ready to give effect
to his programme of Swaraj and Swadeshi, the
six-point programme he had elaborated in July
1909. Intellectually, people often ^saw the wisdom
of Sri Aurobindo’s programme and its undoubted
potentialities. But that was not enough ; the first
enthusiasm of a few years ago had more or less
died down, the new indeterminate flood showed
no signs of coming ; and Sri Aurobindo saw clearly
that a mass movement will not be possible in the
near future ; the portents were far too evident and
he, brave realist that he was, could not miss them ;
the Minto-Morley Reforms had actually hood-
winked many of his countrymen into a somnolent
acquiescence in them ; and the bitterness of the
fruit can only be felt when it was actually tasted.
Such fore-knowledge as was his only appeared a
disturbing nuisance to the timid and the easy-going.
No, no, Sri Aurobindo must throw up the political
sponge for good, — and the sooner, the better !

j. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p, 205.

204

KARMAYOaiN

IV

Only against such a twilight background of
resignation and approaching renunciation can we
rightly understand Sri Aurobindo’s brief spell of
political and journalistic activity during the latter
half of 1909. He was on his feet frequently enough,
— in Calcutta and in other district towns in Bengal ;
he led the Nationalist Party in the Bengal Provincial
Conference at Hooghly in September 1909 and made
the Conference accept the Nationalist resolutions ;
besides, poems, essays, exhortations, these, as they
appeared in the columns of the Karmayogin, gave
abundant proof of Sri Aurobindo’s restless intellec-
tual activity.

In a series of articles which have since been
reprinted under the title, The Brain of India, Sri
Aurobindo discussed illuminatingly the problem of
educating the youth of India. These articles are
not journalism ; they are a serious attempt to outline
a philosophy of education. Modern Indian educa-
tion, being an absurd copy and even vulgarization
of Western models, has compelled us to barter
away our ancient heritage for the proverbial mess of
pottage ; it has debased us, it has almost destroyed
us. The clue to reform should He in reviving, as
far as may be feasible, our traditional methods of
education. After all, Indians can lay claim to a
glorious past. Now asks Sri Aurobindo :

“ What was the secret of that gigantic intellec-
tuality, spirituality and superhuman moral force

SRI AUROBiNjJO

which we see pulsating in the Ramayana and
Mahabharata, in the ancient philosophy, in the
supreme poetry, art, sculpture and architecture
of India ? What was at the basis of the incom-
parable public works and engineering achieve-
ment, the opulent and exquisite industries, the
great triumph of science, scholarship, jurispru-
dence, logic, metaphysics, the unique social
structure ? What supported the heroism and
self-abandonment of the Kshattriya, the Sikh and
the Rajput, the unconquerable national vitality
and endurance ? What was it that stood behind
that civilization second to none in the massiveness
of its outlines or the perfection of its details ?
Without a great and unique discipline involving
a perfect education of soul and mind, a result so
immense and persistent would have been impos-
sible.”^

There were the asrams, of course, and there were also
the ancient Universities, like those of Nalanda and
Takshasila ; but were not these asrams and Univers-
ities themselves based on a vital principle ? Where
did the ancients build and locate the reservoir of
vital energy that alone could have upheld those
stupendous superstructures in the realms of matter,
thought and spirit ?

Sri Aurobindo firmly thinks that the clue to the
whole secret lies in the practice of brahmacharya,

I. The Brain of India, pp. 16-18.
''ofS

x'.ARMAYOGlN

SO widely prevalent in the good old days.^ Brahma-
charya sought to ” raise up the physical to the
spiritual”; it gradually perfected the instruments
of knowledge ; it led to the heightening and ultimate
perfection of the sattvik elements in human nature ;
it created, as it were, an infallible engine of universal
knowledge within.

But, adds Sri Aurobindo, ” this is only possible
to the yogin by the successful prosecution of the
discipline of yoga."^ Brahmacharya is the starting
point, but yoga is the means to the finality of fulfil-
ment. Between these two poles, the ancient Hindus
reared their systems of knowledge, their methods
of education and their experiments in civilization.

'And yet Sri Aurobindo does not say that the
old Brahmacharya- Yoga Axis can be reproduced in
all its details in twentieth century India. He
contents himself by laying bare the ” nature and
psychological ideas of the old system ” so that we
may either re-apply them to our conditions in a
modified form or perfect them even more on the
basis of a ” deeper psychology and a still more
effective discipline.”® But this much is certain :
our educational ideas and ideals are in need of
wholesale overhauling, and this we can successfully
do only if we bear in mind the currents and con-
clusions of our traditional thought and discipline.

1. The Brain of India, p. 24.

2. Ibid., p. 36.

3. Ibid, p. 47-

207

SRI AUKOBINUO

Sri Aurobindo knew thus which items in the
national life were excrescences that needed to be
blotted out, and how they should be replaced by
other healthy growths more suited to the genius of
the nation. He knew it all very clearly, but he
knew also that he could not overnight transform
the grim prospect into the beautiful landscape so
near his heart’s desire. He could but place the
ideal before the nation, and — hope ; and would
He not achieve the desired transformation in the
fullness of time ? Why then should he, Sri
Aurobindo, worry ?

V

Sri Aurobindo would leave the political arena
soon, and all too soon ; but before he actually did
so, he would restate for the benefit of his more
earnest countrymen the " ideal of the Karmayogin ”
in no uncertain terms, so that they might train
themselves and be ready for the supreme ordeal
whenever it should confront them. He accordingly
wrote a series of ten luminous articles in his English
paper, the Karmayogin, and these have since been
reprinted, along with two of Sister Nivedita’s
contributions, under the title, The Ideal of the
Karmayogin.

The message contained in this book is for all,
but especially is it intended for the youth of India.
Sri Aurobindo is firmly of the opinion that hur
salvation lies not in merely reproducing in India

i>.AKMAyOGlN

a toy model of European freedom, with its bicameral
legislatures, casteless societies, utter secularism,
and all-pervading materialism. Sri Aurobindo says,
on the contrary, First Things First :

“We do not believe that by changing the
machinery so as to make our society the ape of
Europe we shall effect social renovation. Widow-
remarriage, substitution of class for caste, adult
marriage, intermarriages, interdining and the
other nostrums of the social reformer are mech-
anical changes which, whatever their merits or
demerits, cannot by themselves save the soul of
the nation alive or stay the course of degradation
and decline. It is the spirit alone that saves, and
only by becoming great and free in heart can we
become socially and politically great and free."^
Sri Aurobindo, again, is not for multiplying new
sects ; they solve nothing, but only add to our
problems. Science and religion, Buddhism, Chris-
tianity, Islam and Hinduism have all seized the
truth, some partially and others integrally ; we need
not, and should not, declare war against any of
these stupendous achievements of the human race.
In a sense, of course, Hinduism ‘ ‘ is the most
sceptical and the mo.st believing of all, the most
sceptical because it has questioned and experimented
the most, the most believing because it has the
deepest experience and the most varied and positive

I. The Ideal of the Karmayogm, p. 7.

20Q

SRI AUKOBlNJJU

spiritual knov/ledge, — that wider Hinduism which
is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a
law of life, which is not a social frame-work but
the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which
rejects nothing but insists on testing and experienc-
ing everything and when tested and experienced
turning it to the soul’s uses, in this Hinduism we
find the basis of the future world-religion.’’^ Let
the Hindu, let all Indians, only recapture the inner
spirit of Hinduism, its abiding spirituality ; matter
need not be denied, but spirituality should be
affirmed ; then all will be well.

It can never be stressed too often that, while
Sri Aurobindo’s vision of Aryan culture was no
doubt partly recapitulatory of the remote past and
revivalist in objective, it was in its general impulsion
dynamic, integral and futurist. He states his
position thus with perspicacity and clinching vigour :

“ It (Nationalism) must be on its guard against
any tendency to cling to every detail that has
been Indian. That has not been the spirit of
Hinduism in the past, there is no reason why
it should be so in the future. In all life there are
three elements, the fixed and permanent spirit,
the developing yet constant soul and the brittle
changeable body. The spirit we cannot change,
we can only obscure or lose ; the soul must not
be rashly meddled with, must neither be tortured

I. The Ideal of the Kartnayogin, pp* 8-9.

'^.rn

jvAKMAYOGlN

into a shape alien to it, nor obstructed in its
free expansion ; and the body must be used as a
means, not over-cherished as a thing valuable
for its own sake. We will sacrifice no ancient
form to an unreasoning love of change, we will
keep none which the national spirit desires to
replace by one that is a still better and truer
expression of the undying soul of the nation."^
Further, Sri Aurobindo’s gospel of Nationalism,
aggressive and virile though it undoubtedly is in
its first phase, is nowhere tainted by the virus that
has made present-day totalitarianism possible in
Germany and Japan. Sri Aurobindo’s Nationalism
is a Nationalism for enriching and extending life,
not for diminishing or destroying it. Sri Aurobindo
wisely points out that a nation, once it has set its
own house in order both politically and spiritually,
“ should preserve itself in Cosmopolitanism some-
what as the individual preserves itself in the family,
the family in the class, the class in the nation, not
destroying itself needlessly but recognizing a larger
interest.”®

A nation, then, should be strong enough to be
able to live a healthy and useful life : it should not
be so strong that it inevitably starts preying upon
weaker nations and even upon the weaker elements
within its own boundaries. Whatever happens,

1. The Ideal of the Karmayogm, pp. 45-6.

2. lhid„ p. 54.

2II

14

SRI AUROBlNDO

the “ god-state ” should not be allowed to evolve
in our midst ; the so-called, but really ungodly,
god-state only rises from the grave of the individual.
But Sri Aurobindo would rather emphasize the
“ greatness of the individual.” And yet even the
greatest of individuals are but instruments in the
hands of the Divine — of, if you will, the Zeit Geist.
Truly did Carlyle point out that ” great men are
the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that
divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is
completed from epoch to epoch, and by some
named history.” Men in themselves are but help-
less thistle-downs, swaying to and fro as the vagrant
breeze intermittently disturbs them ; they are great
only to the extent the Zeit Geist or the terrific energy
of Mahakali informs and inspires them, and carries
them onward by the great momentum of its own im-
pulsion. In other words, ” the greatness of indivi-
duals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within.”^
What should be the ideal of the Karmayogin,
then ? Yoga " is communion with God for knowl-
edge, for love or for work.”^ In Karmayoga, man
apprehends God’s purposes and lets Him make use
of his frail body for achieving His own aims. As
Sri Aurobindo puts it beautifully :

” The Charioteer of Kurukshetra driving the
car of Arjuna over that field of ruin is the image

1. The Ideal of the •Karmayogin, p. 105.
a. Ibid., p. 19.

14 ^

213

js'.AKMAiTOCilN

and description of Karmayoga : for the body is
the chariot and the senses are the horses of the
driving and it is through the blood-stained and
mire-sunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna
pilots the soul of man to Vaicuntha.”^

The Karmayogin should perfect his own instrument
and leave it in the hands of God. To-day a wise
passivity may be the proper thing to preserve, to-
morrow one may be required to go through fire
and brimstone ; in either case, the Karmayogin will
be ready ; the spirit within him will tell him what
he should do, and will also give him the strength
to do it.

No doubt, if all and sundry begin talking about
irmef voices ” and proclaiming themselves to be
the agents of the Divine, ordinary life would grow
quickly untenable. Sri Aurobindo therefore says
that, not everybody, but only the man who has
gone through the austere discipline of yoga and has
communed with the Divine, can thus interpret His
purposes and translate them into action. Every-
body is, of course, potentially a great Karmayogin ;
but few amongst us actually realize our great
potentialities, — and the more is the pity ! Once,
however, individual man has truly realized that he
is an heir to immortality and an agent of the Divine,
he is an irresistible leader of men ; he is irresistible
because he is guided by a Power which no other

I. The [deal of the Karmayogin, pp. 22-3.

213

SRI AUKOJiiNJJO

merely human agency can stand against ; he is
irresistible, being in himself the arm of the eternal
Consciousness-Force. He, the great Karmayogin,
is in fact God manifesting Flimself to average
humanity ; he has caught a glimpse of Infinity and
seen in it both the auspicious God and the terrible
God, and seen them too as the One final Reality :

The God of Wrath, the God of Love are one,

Nor least He loves when most He smites. Alone
Who rises above fear and plays with grief,

Defeat and death, inherits full relief
From blindness and beholds the single Form,

Love masking Terror, Peace supporting storm.

The Friend of Man helps him with Life and Death,

Until he knows. Then freed from mortal breath
He feels the joy of the immortal play ;

Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.

Fie too grows Rudra fierce, august and dire.

And Shiva, sweet fulfiller of desire.^

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 1*9.

214

Part III

PILGRIM OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER TWELVE

PONDICHERRY

I

Ever since his acquittal in the Alipur case, Sri
Aurobindo had repeated intimations from divers
sources that he was a “ marked ” man — •“ marked,”
shall we say, in the Note-Books of the Government !
Once before — ^twice before — ^lie had been prosecuted
without a " scrap of reliable evidence”; he had been
acquitted, on both occasions, but the acquittal was
no security ” either against the trumping up of a
fresh accusation or the arbitrary law of deportation
which dispenses with the inconvenient formality of
a charge and the still more inconvenient necessity
of producing evidence.”^

Sometime in June -July 1909, rumour was " strong
that a case for my (Sri Aurobindo' s) deportation has
been submitted to the Government by the Calcutta
police.”^ A third time he might be prosecuted, or
now he might be even deported ! Under the
circumstances — ^the precarious circumstance of his
being unsure of the morrow — Sri Aurobindo decided

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Ghose, p. 223.

2. Ibid,, p, 224.

217

SRI AURUJIMDO

to publish in his paper his “ Open Letter to My
Countrymen/' to which a reference has already
been made in the previous chapter ; this letter was
to serve the double purpose of clarifying the political
situation of the day and suggesting a programme of
action for the immediate future.

In the letter Sri Aurobindo advisedly used
expressions like “ in case of my deportation .
“ if I do not return from it,” thereby indicating his
partial or veiled prevision of the shape of things to
come. The ‘‘ Open Letter ” was to stand, said
Sri Aurobindo, as his ” last political will and
testament to his countrymen.”^ The Nationalist
party need not be depressed if a particular leader
is jailed or deported. The god-anointed leader will
come .... sooner or later :

” All great movements wait for their God-
sent leader, the willing channel of His force, and
only when he comes, move forward triumphantly
to their fulfilment. The men who have led
hitherto have been strong men of high gifts and
commanding genius, great enough to be the
protagonists of any other movement, but even
they were not sufficient .... Therefore, the
Nationalist party, the custodians of the future,
must wait for the man who is to come. . . ."^
And yet Sri Aurobindo did not take the final

1. Speeches of Aurobindo Gfiose, p. 215.

2, Ibid., pp. 335-6.

FOMDlCJrl£,KRY

decision to retire from politics ; weeks passed, and
months passed ; he was using the Karmayogin as a
mouthpiece for the utterance of his Prophecy, he
was placing before its readers both a vision of the
future and a programme of action that will lead the
nation to the shrine of fulfilment. In December
1909, — as late as that ! — ^Sri Aurobindo made this
exhortation to his countrymen in the course of a
prolegomenon to a bold programme of action :

“ Let us then take up the work God has given
us, like courageous, steadfast and patriotic men,
willing to sacrifice greatly and venture greatly,
because the mission also is great.”

But it was destined otherwise. In the issue of
the Karmayogin, dated January 22, 1910, we learn
that Sri Aurobindo had received an anonymous
letter ” giving him the momentous information that
a certain Gopal Chandra Ray of the C.I.D., with
several assistants, is busy watching 6, College
Square, and the Post Office, and copying all the
letters and postcards that came in his name without
exception.” On January 24th, a Bengali youth
shot dead in broad daylight, in the premises of the
Calcutta High Court, Mr. Shamsul-ul-la, a Deputy
Superintendent of Police. In the issue of the 5th
February, Sri Aurobindo commented on the shoot-
ing outrage and explained the Nationalist Party’s
future course of action. Terrorist outrages were
doubtless on the increase, and for this the Govern-
ment had only to thank themselves ; the wind of

21Q

SRI AUROJSINUO

repression was yielding the fruit — the poisonous
fruit — of the whirlwind of raging terrorism. The
Nationalists were powerless to stem the rising gale
of terrorism then sweeping over Bengal ; they could
only suspend their own even strictly lawful and
peaceful political activities, hoping that the Govern-
ment will be thereby able to put an early end
to the wave of terrorism.

The Nationalist Party was to suspend its
political activities ; and they were to wait for the
advent of the chosen leader of God. As for
himself, Sri Aurobindo would remove himself, at
any rate for a time, from the scene of his public
activities. He would retire into himself, envelop
himself in a vast quietude, and seek the Truth !

Towards the close of February, Sri Aurobindo
took the final decision to retire from Calcutta to the
neighbouring French territory of Chandernagore.
It was hardly ten months after his release from the
Alipur prison ; he now went into a '* prison ” of
his own forging —

Upon Truth's solid rock there stands
A thin-walled ivory tower,

Built light but strong by fairy hands
With thought’s creative power, ^

For about a month, Sri Aurobindo stayed secretly in
Chandernagore and intently, though silently, pursued

I. S. R. Dongerkery, The Ivory Tower, p. 114.

'>'>0

PONDICHERRY

the sadhana of Yoga. But Chandernagore was
dangerously near Calcutta, the storm-centre of the
Indian political world of those days ; and hence Sri
Aurobindo decided to seek a more secluded spot for
continuing his spiritual work. He therefore left
Chandernagore also, and reached Pondicherry, an-
other French possession, on the 4th April 1910.
He first stayed with Sankara Chetty, but later on
moved to his own quarters in the ” White Town ”
and soon completely surrendered himself to Yoga.

Meanwhile, the muddle-headed authorities had
launched a third prosecution against Sri Auro-
bindo, on account of his “ Open Letter ” to his
countrymen that had been published in the Karim-
yogin over eight months ago ! It had taken the
authorities such an unconscionably long time to
make up their minds whether the " Open Letter
was or was not seditious. The Government sur-
passed themselves by alleging that Sri Aurobindo
had made a precipitate flight in order to escape
arrest. Sri Aurobindo, on his part, issued a state-
ment through the columns of the Madras Times fully
explaining his position. Sri Aurobindo had not
sought to avoid the long arm of the law ; he had
only retired to Pondicherry in answer to an imper-
ative inner need to pursue the path of Yoga ; the
warrant for his arrest had been issued after he had
already reached Pondicherry ; he was therefore not
obliged to appear before a British Indian court of
justice.

T

SRI AUROBINDO

The prosecution, on their part, were quite equal
to the occasion. They pressed the case (learning,
presumably, the wrong side of the lesson of the
first Bandemataram case) against the unfortunate
printer of the Karrmyogin. The case went against
the printer in the lower court ; but the printer
appealed against the decision -to the High Court,
where Mr, Justice Woodroffe and Mr. Justice
Fletcher quashed the conviction of the lower court
and gave the decision that Sri Aurobindo’s “ Open
Letter ” was not seditious. Thus, “ for the third
time a prosecution against him had failed !”^

It appears that in the beginning Sri Aurobindo
had entertained the idea of returning to the political
fray under more favourable circumstances and with
a better knowledge of the art of purposeful leader-
ship. By and by, however, he fully realized that
his destiny was to make spiritual, rather than
political or material, conquests. Hence he decided
at last to sever his connection altogether from the
currents and cross-currents of Indian politics and to
devote himself exclusively to yogic sadhana.

11

We have seen how Sri Aurobindo was interested
in Yoga during the latter part of the Baroda period.
What attracted him to Yoga then ? He had spent

I. Sri Aurobindo : a Life Sketch, p. ii,

PONDICHERRY

fourteen years in a foreign country and he had
been both amused and edified by the civilization of
the West ; but in the end he had found it insufficient.
Western civilization flamed forth, indeed, on many
sides, at once brilliantly alluring and scorchingly
devastating ; but wasn’t the central core itself a
darkness, rather than a source of Light ? What
shall it profit man if he gains the whole world but
loses his own soul !

Sri Aurobindo had acquired a measure of intel-
lectual competency and even eminence as a result
of his prolonged stay in England ; but that was not
enough. Returning to India, he ever kept in his
mind the ideal of service to the Motherland, — to the
great Mother, — ^watched the procession of events
with absorbing earnestness, and began preparing
forces so that he could act when the right moment
came. His first organized work in politics was in
the nature of grouping people who accepted the
idea of national independence and were prepared to
take up an appropriate and adequate action ; although
this was undertaken at an early age, it took a regular
shape, as we saw, in or about 1902. Two years
later he turned to Yoga — ^not, indeed, to clarify his
ideas in political matters — ^but to find the spiritual
strength which would support him, enlighten his
way, and perfect the hidden instrument within.
Sri Aurobindo himself thus explained in the Uttar-
para Speech the reasons that first attracted him to
Yoga :

223

SRI AUKOjJINDU

" When I approached God at that time, I
hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic
was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was
in me and I was not absolutely sure that there
was a God at all. I did not feel His presence.
Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas,
the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu
religion. I felt there must be a mighty truth
somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this
religion based on the Vedanta.”^

And Sri Aurobindo wished to wrest that truth
somehow, — but not for a selfish reason ! He did
not “ ask for mukti,” personal salvation ; he did
not desire power or success or fame for himself ;
he rather prayed fervently to God :

" If Thou art, then Thou knowest my heart . .

I do not ask for anything that others ask for. I
ask only for strength to uplift this nation, I ask
only to be allowed to live and work for this people
whom I love and to whom I pray that I may
devote my life.”®

Yes, for himself he wanted nothing ; he had always
in him a considerable equanimity, a natural imper-
turbability, in the face of the world and its diffi-
culties ; and, after some inward depression in his
adolescence (not due to any outward circumstances,
nor yet amounting to sorrow or melancholy, but

I. Speeches of Aurobindo Chose, p. loi.
a. Ibid., pp. loi-a.

224

jeONDICHERRY

merely a strain in the temperament), this mood of
equanimity became fairly settled. His great pas-
sion was “ work ” — ^work for the country, for the
world, finally for the Divine, and always nishkama
karma. During the Baroda period and immediately
afterwards, it was " work ” for the country, for the
Mother. Such partial realization as he was then
able to achieve through the earnestness and con-
stancy of his sadhana only reinforced his faith in
Yoga as the cure for the ills of the world, and of
India in particular.

Ill

When Sri Aurobindo left Baroda and plunged
himself deep into politics, his preoccupation with
Yoga remained. He had had, no doubt, spiritual
experiences from the time he stepped on the Indian
soil ; a vast calm descended upon him with his first
step on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, his first
recontact with the soil and spirit of India ; and this
calm surrounded him and remained with him for
long months afterwards. Again, while walking on
the ridge of the Takht-i-Sulemani in Kashmir, the
realization of the vacant Infinite came upon him,
unbidden as it were ; the living presence of Kali in
the shrine on the banks of the Narmada came upon
him unawares and filled him with its stupendous
majesty ; and he had, on another occasion, when he
was in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda in
the first year of his stay there, a vision of the God-

22

SRI AUROBINilO

head surging up from within him and mastering and
controlling with its gaze all events and surroundings.
But these and others like these were inner experiences
coming of themselves, with a sudden unexpected-
ness, and were hence not the clear results of a
Yogic sadhana. When he did begin practising
Yoga, he did so by himself without a Guru, getting
the rule from a friend who was a disciple of Brah-
mananda of the Gaya Math ; it was confined at
first to assiduous practice of Pranayama, and at one
time Sri Aurobindo did Pranayama for six hours
or more a day. There was no conflict or wavering
between Yoga and politics ; when he started Yoga,
he carried on both without any idea of opposition
between them. He nevertheless wanted to find a
Guru, a teacher who would be able to tell him how
to proceed in his endeavour to wrest the ultimate
secret of knowledge and power from Nature and
God. He established some connection with a
member of the Governing Body of the Naga Sun-
nyasis. The Naga Sunnyasi confirmed Sri Auro-
bindo’s faith in Yoga by curing Barindra in almost
a moment of a violent and clinging hill fever by
merely cutting through a glassful of water cross-
wise with a knife and repeating a silent mantra ;
Barindra drank the water and was instantly cured
of the malady. Although the Naga Sunnyasi gave
Sri Aurobindo a stotra of Kali and conducted
certain kriyas and a Vedic yajna, all this was for
his success in politics and not for Yoga, and Sri

je0MD10Hx.RRY

Aurobindo did not accept the Naga Sunnyasi as
his Guru. Sri Aurobindo likewise also met Brah-
mananda and was greatly impressed by him ;
but he had no real helper or Guru in Yoga till he
met Lele, and that too was only for a short time.
We have already explained in an earlier chapter the
nature of the advice tendered by Lele and the
first results of Sri Aurobindo’s putting it into
practice. When Sri Aurobindo was leaving Bombay
for Calcutta, he asked Lele how he was to get
instructions for Sadhana in his absence ; Lele
after a little thought asked him whether he could
surrender himself entirely to the inner Guide
within him, and move as it moved him ; if so, Sri
Aurobindo needed no instructions from Lele or
anybody else. This Sri Aurobindo accepted and
made that his rule of sadhana and of life.

And yet the whirl of politics and political
journalism cannot constitute an ideal background
for Yogic sadhana. But Sri Krishna intervened at
last ; and the Muzzaferpore outrage and the subse-
quent incarceration of Sri Aurobindo proved indeed
a blessing in disguise to him.

A year’s seclusion and meditation in the Alipur
jail no doubt worked a great transformation in Sri
Aurobindo. His horizon widened, he was able to
discover behind Mother India Vasudeva Himself,
the Divine immanent in all. He had as a rule
never brought any rancour into his politics ; he
never had any hatred for England or the English

227

1 '^

SRI AUKUBINUU

people ; he had always based his claim for freedom
for India on the inherent right to freedom, not on
any charge of misgovernment or oppression ; and if
ever he attacked persons, attacked even violently,
it was for their views on political action, not for any
other motive. As a result of his prison experiences,
Sri Aurobindo was now able to see that Sanatana
Dharma both included and transcended the baffl-
ing vicissitudes of political action. Once again—
now as always — nishkama karma was the watchword
that spurred him to action. But he decided that
first he would follow the path of Yoga — follow it
whithersoever it might lead him — so that he might
gain perfect control over the instrument of purposive
action lodged deep and veiled within himself. A
Rishi Viswamitra is said to have created a whole
new world so that King Trishuncou could sing thus
his Hymn of Triumph :

I shall not die.

Although this body, when the spirit tires

Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires,

My house consumes, not I

I hold the sky

Together and upbear the teeming earth.

I was the eternal thinker at my birth
And shall be, though I die.^

Could not he, Sri Aurobindo, attempt — so to say —
a repetition of the feat ? As he confessed to Dilip

IS*

1 . Collected Poems and Plays, I. p. 140.

228

PONUICHERRY

Kumar Roy :

‘‘ I too wanted at one time to transform
through my Yoga the face of the world. I had
wanted to change the fundamental nature and
movements of humanity, to exile all the evils
which affect mortality .... It was with this aim
and outlook that I turned to Yoga in the beginning,
and I came to Pondicherry because I had been
directed by the Voice to pursue my Yoga here.”^

IV

We do not know what exactly happened to Sri
Aurobindo in the process of Yoga during the first
four years of his retirement in Pondicherry. All
that we are permitted to know is that this was
a period of “ silent yoga.” The fever-paroxysms
and the incessant rattle and drive of a combative
political life were now left far behind. Sri Auro-
bindo had parted from his wife, his friends, his
colleagues, and the very scene of his recent fruitful
activities ; he had, in short, stripped the Self of its
clinging clothes of mere ego-stuff and made it
'' lone, limitless, nude, immune."^

But that was only the beginning. Although the
personal problem was in a sense already solved,
the infinitely more stupendous human problem, yet

1. Tirthankar ; the quotation is extracted from Dilip’s own English
rendering of the account of his interview with Sri Aurobindo.

2, Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 300.

229

SRI ADKOBINUO

remained. Could he do nothing to bring about
“ a new Heaven and a new Earth ” in our midst ?
Having already long outgrown Yogi Lele’s instruc-
tions, Sri Aurobindo now experimented earnestly
and incessantly in the delectable laboratory of his
soul ; he bravely adventured on his own, following
the divine guidance within him and — ^in the appoint-
ed time — ^he apprehended all that was to be appre-
hended, saw very Infinity face to face. He had
gone beyond his first experience in Baroda and
Bombay described by him in his poem. Nirvana.
He could say at that time in the strength of his
soul's vision :

Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A peace stupendous, featureless, still
Replaces all, — what once was I, in it
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable

Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.^

He had now covered a vaster field of experience
both positive and negative and passed beyond both
to the Supreme Truth reconciling them.

Sri Aurobindo had, in the light of his own
Yogic experiences, invented a new instrument, at
once so delicate and so all-powerful ; he had deve-
loped the spiritual technique of puma Yoga or
“ integral” Yoga, comprehending, harmonizing, and
transcending the two great categories of experience.

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. agS.

230

PUNUlCHHiCRiT

Matter and Spirit, and the three great classical high
roads to salvation, Jnana, Karma and Bhakti.

It was a significant victory, no doubt ; but the
victory was also tinged with a huge disappointment.
As he said to Dilip Kumar Roy ;

“ It was then (i.e., after my own atma-siddhi)
that my outlook changed with the knowledge
born of my new Yogic consciousness. But then
I found, to my utter disillusionment, that it was
only my ignorance which had led me to think that

the impossible was feasible here and now in

order to help humanity out, it was not enough
for an individual, however great, to achieve an
ultimate solution individually ; humanity has to
be ripe for it too.”^ -

If this realization of his powerlessness to alter
the face of the world with a mere flourish of his
Yogic wand did indeed disillusion him, it at least
clearly enough indicated the line of action he
should henceforth pursue. He would not attempt
the establishment of a Golden Age, a Satya Yuga,
“ a new Heaven and a new Earth,” all at once ;
however much such a consummation is a thing to
be devoutly wished, it was also a sheer impossibil-
ity ; the utmost that Sri Auxobindo could do was
to convey to others, however partially and fitfully,
the light of his own unique realizations and his
hopes for the supramentalization of human nature

1. Dilip, Ttrthankar.

2 :] I

SRI AXJROBINDO

and of ali terrestrial existence. Perhaps, some at
least would hearken and respond to the paean of
joy and the song of hope, and join Sri Aurobindo
in establishing conditions favourable enough for the
descent and acceptance of the Supramental Light.
Meanwhile, having gathered knowledge " there,”
Sri Aurobindo will descend to his ‘‘ human frame,”
live and move and have his being with the men
of this unredeemed world, choosing his instruments,
planning the future,

Testing, rejecting, and confiimmg souls —

Vessels of the Spirit ; for the golden age
In Kali comes, the iron lined with gold,

The Yoga shall be given back to men,

The sects shall cease, the grim debates die out
And atheism perish from the Earth,

Blasted with knowledge, love and brotherhood
And wisdom repossess Sri Krishna's world. ^

I. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 140.

2S2

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ARYA

I

After four years of silent Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
decided to run a philosophical journal from Pondi-
cherry. Fate had just then brought him into
contact with a remarkable Frenchman by name
Paul Richard and she who is now known as the
Mother. They had for years been in search of a
Master in whom they could recognize a World
Teacher, they had sought him in the West and in
the East, and they found him at last in the person
of Sri Aurobindo. As M. Richard said later to a
Japanese audience :

“ The hour is coming of great things, of great
events, and also of great men, the divine men of
Asia. All my life I have sought for them across
the world, for all my life I have felt they must
exist somewhere in the world, that this world
would die if they did not live. For they are its
light, its heat, its life. It is in Asia that I found
the greatest amongst them — ^the leader, the hero
of tomorrow. He is a Hindu. His name is
Aurobindo Ghose.”^

I. Dawn over Asia.

SRI AUROBINUO

The Mother, who had already gone far in spiri-
tual realization and occult wisdom and experience,
was no less overwhelmed by this vision — ^this
reality — of the New Man. All three decided to
make the new magazine their principal means of
reaching to the outer world. At the beginning they
published an English journal, Arya, and a French
journal. Revue de Grande Synthdse, the French
edition being for the most part a translation of the
English edition. Unluckily, the inauguration of
the Arya and its French counterpart synchronized
with World War I. The French edition was
therefore discontinued after the first seven issues.
Arya, however, was published for nearly seven
years, commencing on Sri Aurobindo’s forty-third
birthday and ceasing publication in 1921.

Arya and Revue de Grande SynthSse were in the
main philosophical journals. Edited by Sri Auro-
bindo, in collaboration with M. Richard and the
Mother, Arya placed before itself a two-fold object :

“ I. A systematic study of the highest pro-
blems of existence ;

2. The formation of a vast synthesis of
knowledge, harmonizing the divers religious
traditions of humanity, occidental as well as
oriental. Its method will be that of a realism,
at once rational and transcendental, a realism
consisting in the unification of intellectual and
scientific disciplines with those of intuitive
experience.”^

I. Arya, advertisement on the cover page.

ARYA

It promised to its subscribers studies in speculative
philosophy, translations of ancient texts and com-
mentaries on them, essays in comparative religion,
and practical suggestions regarding “ inner culture
and self-development.”^ More particularly, it ex-
plained its ” ideal ” in the following words :

” unity for the human race by an inner one-
ness and not only by an external association of
interests ; the resurgence of man out of the
merely animal and economic life or the merely
intellectual and sesthetic into the glories of the
spiritual existence ; the pouring of the power of
the spirit into the physical mould and mental
instrument so that man may develop his man-
hood into that true Supermanhood which shall
exceed our present state as much as this exceeds
the animal state from which Science tells us that
we have issued. These three are one ; for man’s
unity and man’s self-transcendence can come
only by living in the spirit.”^

The principal contributor to Arya was Sri
Aurobindo. No doubt, M. Richard's Eternal
Wisdom and The Wherefore of the Worlds — both
published serially — ^were interesting sequences ; but
it is no derogation to the other very occasional
contributors to say that Sri Aurobindo was, as a
matter of pure fact, the heart and soul and brain

I. Arya, advertisement on the cover page.

SRI AaROBlNUU

of the Arya. Without him and his many luminous
and voluminous, varied and weighty contributions,
Arya must have had the look of Hamlet without the
Prince of Denmark.

At the very outset, Sri Aurobindo sketched out
a number of massive sequences and he permitted
each monthly paper boat to carry to its customers,
near or far, its welcome load of philosophy, social
and literary criticism, exegesis, wisdom, poetry
and prophecy. There has been no other magazine
quite like it in all the long and diverting history of
journalism, in this or any other country. It was
truly a “ one-man show,” as was the Prahuddha
Bharata, during the first few months of its existence,
under the editorship of that brilliant writer and
precocious Yogi, the late B. R. Rajam Iyer. Arya,
then, was a '' one-man show but the man was
Sri Aurobindo and that gave Arya— -and gives it
even now, although it was discontinued over
twenty years ago — a permanent niche in the temple
of fame.

11

Why did Sri Aurobindo call his journal ” Arya ”?
Could he have had a sense of racial superiority, — ■
d la Hitler and the loud protagonists of the Blonde
Beast of the Nordic race ? An impossible thought !
Sri Aurobindo has beautifully and convincingly
explained the term :

” Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense.

ARYA

Arya means an effort or an uprising and over-
coming. The Aryan is he who strives and
overcomes all outside him and within him that
stands opposed to the human advance. Self-
conquest is the first law of his nature. ... For
in everything he seeks truth, in everything right,

in everything height and freedom

Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest.
Therefore what he conquers he does not destroy,
hut ennobles and fulfils .... always the Aryan
is a worker and warrior. He spares himself no
labour of mind or body, whether to seek the
Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty,
he accepts no cessation from fatigue. Always
he fights for the coming of that kingdom within
himself and in the world.

The word “ Arya ” thus connotes certain qualities
of " head ” and “ heart,” certain aptitudes and
aspirations, and has no reference whatsoever to
race. An austere and uncompromising aspiration
and a stern and determined endeavour alone mark
the true Aryan ; and when the Aryan, after his
trials and tribulations, reaches at last the sanctuary
of success, he becomes the perfected Aryan, the
” Arhat”; he has attained fulfilment in the three
rungs of the ascending spiral of consciousness, —
the individual, the cosmic-universal, and the trans-
cendent. ” The perfect Arhat is he,” says Sri

I Vieuis and Reviews, pp 9-1 1.

237

SRi AUKUBINUU

Aurobindo, “ who is able to live simultaneously
in all these three apparent states of existence,
elevate the lower into the higher, receive the higher
into the lower, so that he may represent perfectly
in the symbols of the world that with which he is
identified in all parts of his being, — the triple and
triune Brahman.”^

That being the description of the Arhat, he is
potentially lodged as much within an Asiatic as a
Westerner, as much within a Bengali or Tamil or
Gujarati Hindu as a French or American or Aus-
tralian lady. If Sri Aurobindo conceives of the
Arhat, the completed Aryan, as being rather akin
to the " Jivanmukta

Although consenting here to a mortal body.

He is the Undying ; limit and bond he knows not ;

For him the sons are a playground.

Life and its deeds are his splendid shadow

the Mother thus explains the evolutionary process
that transforms mere man into the ideal of his
fervent imaginations :

“ All principle of individuality is overpassed,
she (Nature) is plunged in Thy infinity that
allows oneness to be realized in all domains with-
out confusion, without disorder. The combined
harmony of that which persists, that which
progresses and that which eternally is, is little

1. Views and Reviews, p. 12.

2. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 286.

238

ARYA

by little accomplished in an always more com-
plex, more extended and more lofty equilibrium.
And this interchange of the three modes of life
allows the plenitude of the manifestation.”^

This is the goal that Arya set before all men and
women ; and it was the aim of the journal to per-
suade and convert all to its way of thought and
life, to make all see in the ” Aryan Path ” the
true and sole means of self-realization and purposive,
fruitful and noble endeavour.

Ill

The major sequences in Arya were, respectively.
The Life Divine, The Secret of the Veda, Essays on
the Gita, The Psychology of Social Development,
The Ideal of Human Unity, The Future Poetry,
A Defence of Indian Culture, and, the longest and in
some respects the most ambitious of them all,
The Synthesis of Yoga. These are giant thought-
structures, reared on a foundation of spiritual ex-
perience or intuitive thought and realized in all
their solidity and beauty by the magic wand of
Sri Aurobindo’s prose style. Of these superb
sequences, only The Life Divine and Essays on the
Gita are now available in book form.

The minor sequences included commentaries
on Isha and Kena Upanishads, The Hymns of the

I. Prayers and Meditations, p. 6o ; and Priires et Miditations, p, 322.

239

SRI AUKOBiMUO

Atris, and Heraclitus, The Renaissance in India,
A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture, and Is
Inhia Civilized, the last four being reviews or ex-
tended reviews. Of these, again, Isha Upanishad,
Heraclitus and The Renaissance in India have been
issued in book form. Various other contributions
to the pages of the Arya are also now issued in booklet
form — Ideal and Progress, The Superman, Evolution,
Views and Revieivs, and Thoughts and Glimpses.
But by far the major portion of Sri Aurobindo’s
contributions to the Arya has not been republished
in a handy form. Translations, reviews, aphorisms
and epigrams, miscellaneous essays, comments on
the progress of the war or on the prospects of per-
petual peace, discussions on materialism and self-
determination, discourses on the Reincarnating
Soul and the Ascending Unity, notices of books
and journals, appreciations of poetry and Art, —
these too are scattered in princely profusion in the
garden of the Arya.

In this and the subsequent sections we shall
glance at some of these minor sequences and other
individual contributions to the Arya.^ One of the
most interesting and thoughtful of these minor
sequences is The Renaissance in India, which con-
sists of four chapters initially suggested by Dr.
James H. Cousins’s book on the subject. As in
The Future Poetry also, Dr. Cousins’s book is merely

I. The major sequences are discussed in the subsequent chapters.

240

AviYA

the starting point ; the rest is drawn from Sri Auro-
bindo’s own intuitive grasp of the fundamentals of
Indian culture.

The four essays that constitute this illuminating
study briefly discuss, firstly, the causes of the deca-
dence of yesterday, secondly, the “ indeterminate
confusion of present tendencies and first efforts,”^
and, thirdly, the possibilities of tomorrow. Un-
like many others, Sri Aurobindo does not think
that India has deteriorated because of too much
religion. In India religion has meant more to the
people than what it has meant to the Westerners ;
in fact, there is no exact synonym for the word
“ religion ” in Sanskrit. If, however, argues Sri
Aurobindo, “ we give rather to religion the sense
of the following of the spiritual impulse in its fullness
and define spirituality as the attempt to know and
live in the highest self, the divine, the all-embracing
unity and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest
possible values, then it is evident that there was
not too much of religion, but rather too little of
it — and in what there was, a too one-sided and
therefore insufficiently ample tendency. The right
remedy is, not to belittle still farther the agelong
ideal of India, but to return to its old amplitude
and give it a still wider scope, to make in very truth
all the life of the nation a religion in this high spiri-
tual sense.

1. The Renaissance in India, p. 49.

2. Ibid., p. 89 : see also Nolini Kanta Gupta’s The Malady of the Century,
pp. 44-so.

241

SRI AUROBINDO

Another very informative and most stimulating
book is Sri Aurobindo’s Heraclitus. It too started
as a review — a review of Prof. R. D. Ranade’s paper
on the philosophy of Heraclitus — and grew ulti-
mately into a brochure of packed wisdom and critical
insight. A diligent and enthusiastic student of
Greek thought and literature, Sri Aurobindo is
particularly fitted to interpret Heraclitus to present-
day Indians. Heraclitus no doubt discussed the
very same questions that the ancient Indian thinkers
also discussed ; the lines of his reasoning were
often unexpectedly the same as those that Vedic
and Vedantic seers had pursued in some of their
boldest adventures and loftiest flights ; even the
conclusions sometimes reveal a cousin-brotherly
relationship, thereby indicating a surprising enoiigh
kinship between the higher reaches of Greek and
Indian thought respectively.

Sri Aurobindo maintains that Heraclitus was
more than a mere maker of aphorisms and thought-
soaked epigrams ; “ though no partaker in or sup-
porter of any kind of rites or mummery, Heraclitus
still strikes one as at least an intellectual child of
the Mystics and of Mysticism, although perhaps
a rebel son in the house of his mother. He has
something of the mystic style, something of the
intuitive Appollonian inlook into the secrets of
existence."^ Not caring to reduce his ideas

I. Heraclitus, p. 4.

242

AR/A

into a system, Heraclitus only threw out pregnant
suggestions here and there, — suggestions often ex-
pressed in a language that was as much of a riddle
as the general riddle of the universe itself and its
infinitely varied and seemingly baffling dichotomies.
But Sri Aurobindo thinks that perhaps Heraclitus,
as did the Vedic and Vedantic seers as well, located
Reality at a being as also in a becoming, that he did,
however dimly, posit the theory of pralaya, not
far different from the " Puranic conflagration of
the world by the appearance of the twelve suns,
the Vedantic theory of the eternal cycles of mani-
festation and withdrawal from manifestation.”^
And yet Heraclitus’ is not a full and final revela-
tion ; his X-raying intelligence, lucid and powerful,
discovered and exposed to human apprehension
two of the basic principles of existence, — universal
reason and universal force ; but the third consti-
tuent of the triune ultimate Reality escaped Hera-
clitus, as it has escaped most occidental thinkers
and philosophers. Indian thought, however, knew
of “ a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman;
besides the universal consciousness active in divine
knowledge, besides the universal force active in
divine will, it saw the universal delight active in
divine love and joy.”^ And — did Heraclitus see
something even of this, a ripple of the divine Ananda,

1. Heraclitus, p. 32.

2. Ibid., p. 67,

243

SRI AUROBINDO

as he saw it manifest in the ineffable kingdom of
the child ? Perhaps ; and there Sri Aurobindo
appropriately leaves Heraclitus.

IV

A Defence of Indian Culture is a much longer
sequence than either The Renaissance in India or
Heraclitus. It started as a critical review of Mr.
Archer’s strictures on Indian Culture ; but, after
the first few instalments, the name of the series was
changed from “ A Rationalistic Critic on Indian
Culture ” into A Defence of Indian Culture, a detailed
and splendid apologia in over twenty chapters.
Mr. Archer had pointed out that ‘‘ India has no
spirituality”; and Sri Aurobindo rightly interjects,
— ” a portentous discovery !” It would seem, ac-
cording to this ” rationalistic critic,” that India
has succeeded ” in killing the germs of all sane
and virile spirituality Sri Aurobindo’s appro-
priate comment is :

” The calm and compassion of Buddha
victorious over suffering, the meditation of the
thinker tranced in communion with the Eternal,
passed above the seekings of thought into
identity with the supreme light of the Spirit, the
rapture of the saint made one by love in the pure
heart with the transcendent and universal Love,
the will of the Karmayogin raised above egoistic
desire and passion into the impersonality of the

AiiVA

divine and universal will, these things on which
India has set the highest value and which have
been the supreme endeavour of her greatest
spirits, are not sane, are not virile [^”

That is the charge, — a charge as absurd as saying
that the Pacific is not broad and deep enough or
that the Himalayas are not massive and high
enough. Sri Aurobindo easily and convincingly
turns the tables on the confounded Mr. William
Archer ; and, on the positive side, Sri Aurobindo
enables the reader to take a peep into the true
inwardness of Indian culture and helps him to
grasp the core of authentic — " sane and virile ” —
spirituality in the abiding monuments of Indian
culture. Especially is Sri Aurobindo’ s appreciation
and eloquent defence of Indian Art valuable to us,
since we are often apt to be led away by the Archer-
like fulminations of most Western, and even some
present-day Indian, detractors of our artistic
heritage. The gravamen of the charge is that
Indian Art is not "realistic.” What do these
ancient sculptors and painters mean by giving us
images and pictures of men with four hands and
three heads and a middle eye and an unbeautiful
projection from the nipple, — all totally unknown
to even the expertest students of human anatomy ?
Are we to look upon them, in accordance with
arrogant Western opinion, " as undeveloped, in-

1, Ajya, V, pp. S4S-6.

24?

SRI AUKOBINUU

ferior art or even a mass of monstrous and abortive
miscreation ?”^

Let us be done with this self- derogation and
inferiority complex, says Sri Aurobindo ; let us
free ourselves from the dead-weight of foreign
standards, let us rather look at our architecture and
our painting and our sculpture, our arts of dance
and music, in the light of their own “ profound
intention and greatness of spirit. When we so
look at it, we shall be able to see that the sculpture
of ancient and mediaeval India claims its place on
the very highest levels of artistic achievement.”^
And so also with the other Fine Arts that flourished
in ancient India. Sri Aurobindo snappingly re-
marks that “art is not anatomy, nor an artistic
masterpiece necessarily a reproduction of physical
fact or a lesson in natural science.”® Art may be
realistic, even crudely naturalistic ; it may be
impressionistic ; it may be shot through and through
by symbolism ; Realistic or Naturalistic Art, Im-
pressionistic or Cubist Art, they are all valid
renderings of Reality, truthful enough all of them,
though not all truthful to an equal extent. “ Art
has flowed,” says Sri Aurobindo elsewhere, ” in
two separate streams in Europe and Asia ”; while
the best European Art satisfies ” the physical

1. At^o, VI, p. 483.
a. Ibid., VI, p. 484.
3. Ibid, VI, p. 494.

246

AfeVA

requirements of the sesthetic sense, the laws of
formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity,
the portrayal of life and outward reality,” the best
Indian Art reaches ” beyond them and expresses
inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality
of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty
and desirableness and the manifestation of divine
force and energy in phenomenal creation.”^ Indian
Art — at least the best of it — ^has had always its
origin from the utmost depths of the human soul,
and then only rose to the levels of the heart and the
mind, to gather itself at last into a radiant, if not a
rounded, perfection rendered in terms of sound
and rhythm and form and colour. As it originated
in the human soul, its appeal also is, not to the
rational constituent of man, but to the deeper,
truer, psychic constituent.

While reviewing Gangoly’s South Indian Bronzes,
Sri Aurobindo pertinently remarked with reference
to Indian Art :

”... .always one has to look not at the form,
but through and into it to see that which has
seized and informed it. The appeal of this art
is in fact to the human soul for communion with
the divine Soul and not merely to the imderstand-
ing, the imagination and the sensuous eye. It is
a sacred and hieratic art, expressive of the pro-
found thought of Indian philosophy and the

1. The National Value of Art, pp. 46-7.

347

SRI AUROBINDO

deep passion of Indian worship. It seeks to
render to the soul that can feel and the eye that
can see the extreme values of the suprasensuous.”^
If, then, the aim that the Indian artist sets before
himself was a highly laudable one and if, further,
he has been able to realize his artistic aims again
and again with a marvellous and perennial force,
no other considerations should stand in the way of
our recognizing and appreciating both the inspiration
and the achievements of the great Arts of India.
After all, Indian culture is ours, and it is the genuine
article ; its spirituality, far from drying up the
foundations of life, only helped the full flowering
of Indian life, and it ever acted as “ the most
powerful force for the many-sided development of
the human race.”^

Even so, Sri Aurobindo is no mere partisan of
Indian Culture. He is amazingly clear-eyed in
his perception of the strong and weak points of the
different civilizations of the world ; he judges with
knowledge and impartiality, he differentiates with
subtlety and lucidity, and he prognosticates with
vision and clarity. In just a couple of sentences,
Sri Aurobindo spans the past, the present and the
future, and gives us a miniature history of human
civilization, indicating the triumphs of the past as
also the hopes of the future ;

1. Views and Reviews, p. 53.
S. Arya, VI, p. 561.

248

ARYA

“ Greece developed to a high degree the
intellectual reason and the sense of form and
harmonious beauty, Rome founded firmly strength
and power and patriotism and law and order,
modern Europe has raised to enormous propor-
tions practical reason, science and efficiency and
economic capacity, India developed the spiritual
mind working on the other powers of man and
exceeding them, the intuitive reason, the philoso-
phical harmony of the Dharma informed by the
religious spirit, the sense of the eternal and the
infinite. The future has to go on to a greater
and more perfect comprehensive development of
these things and to evolve fresh powers. ...

V

While the Arya was in the main a “ Philosophi-
cal Review,” it nevertheless occasionally glanced
at the contemporary political scene. It is true that
Sri Aurobindo had retired from active politics ;
but it was this very circumstance that enabled him
to survey the world crisis created by World War I
from the vantage ground of the sublime aloofness
and steady wisdom of the Seer. The life of the
Arya was almost exactly contemporaneous with
the course of the War and its Aftermath ; and no
wonder the War and the Peace were the subjects

I. Arya, VI, pp. 224-5.
249

SKI AUKOBINDO

of some of Sri Aurobindo’s most trenchant and
prophetic utterances.

When, after four terribly sanguinary years of
total warfare, the Armistice was signed at last,
Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Ary a in December 1918
under the heading, “ At the end of the War

“ It is the wrath of Rudra that has swept over
the earth and the track of his footprints can be
seen in these ruins. There has come as a result
upon the race the sense of having lived in many
falsehoods and the need of building according
to an ideal. Therefore we have now to meet
the question of the Master of Truth. Two
great words of the divine Truth have forced
themselves insistently on our minds through
the crash of the ruin and the breath of the tempest
and are now the leading words of the hoped-
for reconstruction — ^freedom and unity.

The world was tired of total warfare, and men
wanted the reign of perpetual peace ; but there were
insuperable obstacles on the way of the realization
of the ideal of human brotherhood. Without
freedom — ^freedom for individual man and also for
each nationality — ^healthy self-expression will be
impossible ; without order and unity — a sense
of self-discipline in individual man and also in the
life of each nation — ^harmony will be impossible.
Freedom and Unity are indeed the poles of our

ARYA

existence ; but we should leam to preserve the
balance between them, else we shall be lured to one
or the other with fatal completeness, and thereby
we are sure to destroy ourselves either by indulging
in an excess of “freedom” or by succumbing to
the death-trap of total collectivism.

This was the problem that faced the “ Big Four”
of the Peace Conference at Versailles ; but none
of them — not even President Woodrow Wilson —
could rise to the occasion. They were tired old
men, either without vision ox without vitality;
and the world waited — “ humped in silence ” —
for the results of the Peace Conference. Sri Auro-
bindo read the signs correctly and wrote on “1919,”
the fateful year of the Carthaginian Peace, in the
July issue of the Arya :

“ This year too may be only the end of an
acute phase of a first struggle, the commencement
of a breathing time, the year of a makeshift, the
temporary halt of a flood in motion. That is so
because it has not realized the deeper mind of
humanity nor answered to the far-reaching inten-
tion of the Time-Spirit.”^

The “ Big ” Powers were but manffiuvring for
position in the post-War world ; the imposition of
reparations on Germany was, as Lord Keynes was
fast realizing, a stupid business ; the scramble for
her former colonies was most unedifying ; the

SRI AukoBinjdO

inability of the chief Powers to achieve unanimity
of opinion on the momentous issues of the day was
very portentous. The Allies might have won
World War I, but they were fast losing the Peace !

Moreover, for all the talk of “ making the world
safe for democracy ” or making it a “ place fit for
heroes to live in,” the War had not been fought
on a clear-cut moral issue ; it had been but ” a very
confused clash and catastrophe of the inter-tangled
powers of the past, present and future. The result
actually achieved .... is not the last result nor the
end of the whole matter, but it represents the first
sum of things that was ready for working out in the
immediateness of the moment’s potency. More
was involved which will now press for its reign,
but belongs to the future.”^ In regard, then, to
the central human problem of achieving a concord
between the two poles of Freedom and .Security on
a world basis, World War I was worse than useless ;
one more chapter of Human History was ended,
but all had yet to be begun ; the human spirit had
” still to find itself, its idea and its greater orienta-
tion.”^

Sri Aurobindo’s worst fears had come true.
And so a year later he wrote again in the Arya
under the title, ” After the War

“ The war that was fought to end war has

i.Arya, V, p. 767.

3. Ibid., V, p. 768.

2‘;2

ARYA

been only the parent of fresh armed conflict and
civil discord and it is the exhaustion that followed
it which alone prevents as yet another vast and
sanguinary struggle. The new fair and peaceful
world order that was promised us has gone far
away into the land of chimeras. The League
of Nations that was to have embodied it hardly
even exists or exists only as a mockery and a
byword. It is an ornamental, a quite helpless
and otiose appendage to the Supreme Council,
at present only a lank promise dangled before
the vague and futile idealism of those who are
still faithful to its sterile formula, a League on
paper and with little chance, even if it becomes
more apparently active, of being anything more
than a transparent cover or a passive support for
the domination of the earth by a close oligarchy
of powerful governments or, it may seem, of
two allied and imperiahstic nations.”^

This “ prophecy ” was uttered in August 1920 ;
the history of the two subsequent decades has amply
borne it out ; and World War I and the Peace of
Versailles did not end War — ^for we are again in the
midst of another and a bloodier struggle, and none
of us can say when World War II will end or whether
it at least will give us a healthy and a lasting peace

1. Arya, VII, p. 28.

2. Written in October 1943 .

253

SKI AUROBINDO

VI

Thus for six years and a half, the Arya gave
its readers and the world at large sheer Plenty in
the different departments of knowledge — philoso-
phy, literature, yoga, politics, art, criticism, and
sociology. M. Richard’s collections of extracts
from the World’s outstanding thinkers, suggestively
grouped under various headings, might also have
appealed to many readers of the Arya ; the wise
men and women of all ages and climes figure in
these anthologies and often reinforce, by necessary
implication, the more studied and systematic ex-
positions in Sri Aurobindo’s major sequences and
other contributions. The magazine seems to have
paid its own way, and even to have left a surplus
behind. And, although the Arya ceased publica-
tion in 1921, its message is there for ail time to come ;
it is there for men and women to read and to ponder,
to ponder and to live, to live and to realize.

While we shall discuss the “ message ” of the
Arya in the subsequent chapters, we shall here say
a word or two about Sri Aurobindo’s prose style.
We have seen that his stay in England gave Sri
Aurobindo, not only a perfect mastery of English,
but also a very considerable, often a most intimate,
acquaintance with other modern European and
Classical languages ; during his stay in Baroda,
Sri Aurobindo likewise mastered Sanskrit, Bengali,
Gujarati and Marathi ; in the first years of the Pondi-
cherry period, Sri Aurobindo seems to have read

254

ARYA

and mastered the Vedas also. Again, by the time
Sri Aurobindo began editing the Arya, he had
already played several roles in the lih of life-
student and teacher, poet and critic, editor and
politician, patriot and prophet, — and he was now a
man of steady wisdom, a possessor of a deep,
integral knowledge. We thus find in the Sri Auro-
bindo of the Arya period a master of many languages
and knowledges and disciplines, which make him,
incidentally, a gifted writer in English who finds
it easy and natural to turn his thoughts into verse
or to give them, in the words of Dryden, “ the
other harmony of prose.”

Sri Aurobindo’s prose works are many in number,
fall under various categories, and are the by-pro-
ducts of about fifty years of almost ceaseless literary
activity. The ” New Lamps for Old ” and Bankim
Chandra articles in the Indu Prakash ; the editorial
and other contributions to the Bandemataram and
the Karmayogin and the Arya ; and, more recently,
the letters — ^hundreds of them — ^to the disciples :
if one considers all this in bulk, one knows at once
that one is standing before a born lord of language ;
for Sri Aurobindo scatters words about, at once
with precision and liberality ; he is both voluble
in appearance and compact in ejSect ; and he is so
consummate a literary artist that his art ever covers
up the traces of its toils, leaving only the well-cut
diamond behind. There is not, of course, one
style in them all but rather mapy equally significant

25S

SRl AUKOxilNUO

and triumphant styles ; and yet it is not far from
the truth to say that Sri Aurobindo’s most char-
acteristic means of self-revelation is a poetic, highly
ornate, and richly nervous style that recalls English
masters like Burton and Browne and Lamb and
Landor at different times but is, in fact, sui generis,
Sri Aurobindo’s deliberate compositions in prose,
whether they be stray journalistic essays or vast
thought-edifices, are generally distinguished by the
qualities of clarity, quiet assurance, classical phrasing,
and appropriateness to the theme and the mood
and the occasion. You may tackle any of his prose
" tracts for the times ” or journaUstic effusions or
massive treatises, — ^there is no faltering at the exor-
dium, no thinness in the structure of the argument,
no weakness in the peroration. Works like The
Life Divine, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of
Yoga, The Future Poetry, The Psychology of Social
Development, The Ideal of Human Unity and A
Defence of Indian Culture are mighty edifices,
boldly conceived and executed with both imagi-
nation and a minute particularity. Sri Aurobindo
has never felt it beneath his notice to attend to de-
tails ; a true artist, he has always realized that even
seeming trifles have their own appointed place in
the fullness of the final achievement. As he once
wrote to Dilip :

" Each activity is important in its own place ;
an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small
things in themselves, but in their place they are

2^6

ARYA

indispensable to the building up of a world ;
it cannot be made up only of mountains and sun-
sets and streamings of the aurora borealis —
though these have their place there. All depends
on the force behind these things and the purpose
in their action. . .

Sri Aurobindo has accordingly made his essays and
treatises carry much spiritual force and he has
written them all with a specific though many-sided
purpose. Although his prose works were mostly
written under the peculiar exigencies of periodical
publication, they nevertheless preserve form and
unity of impression, and claim and secure for Sri
Aurobindo a place among the four or five supreme
modern masters of English prose.

VII

It is, perhaps, convenient as it is also necessary
to study in particular the two monumental works.
Essays on the Gita and The Life Divine , — study
them not only on account of their thought- content
but also as works of prose art — ^because they have
the added advantage of having gone through a
process of revision since their publication in the
Arya and they are, further, easily accessible now in
book form. The Essays are in intention exegetical ;
the Lord’s Song is paraphrased, often verse by verse ;

I Quoted m Ttrthankar, p. 366.

257

SRI AUKOBIMIJO

Lord Krishna’s uttered and unuttered thoughts
are sifted, arranged, illustrated, expanded ; seemingly
and endlessly repetitive, the Essays are seen in the
end to be soniehow endowed with a marvellous
compactness and unity of their own. What has
happened is this : while doubtless deriving his
primary inspiration from the “Song Celestial,’’
Sri Aurobindo has created out of it his own rich
individual music that enchants and exhilarates
the reader and gradually effects in him a heightened
awareness and a keener sensibility.

Likewise, when superficially considered, a work
like The Life Divine would appear to be a severely —
even forbiddingly — abstruse treatise, bristling with
obscurities and technical terms and puzzling differ-
entiations, On the other hand, closer acquaintance
with it makes one realize that the whole Hima-
layan edifice is only a Beethovenian prose
symphony. There are discussions, no doubt,
and in so far as they are discussions they give
adequate proof of a virile mental forge at work ;
no mere logician or dialectician developed a thesis
or elaborated an argument or demolished an imper-
fect theory better than Sri Aurobindo does — and
does frequently — ^in The Life Divine. But, speaking
as a whole, “ the reasoning and exposition in the
book are not of the ‘ dialectical ’ kind proper to the
divided mentality, but are of the same nature as,
and cannot be separated from, direct vision.’’^ Sri

I, R. Vaidyanathaswami in the Indian Express, August 15, 1940.

258

ARYA

Aurobindo thus writes with the glad illumined
surmise — ^the calm and complete certainty — of the
blest Seer who has been “ there,” and is now with
us only because —

He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous wayd

Naturally and inevitably, therefore, Sri Aurobindo’s
perceptions and revelations of Reality, his recorda-
tions of the choreography of Cosmic lila, and his
delineation of the contours of Sachchidananda
span themselves out into richly cadenced rhythmical
patterns. We can give here only one superb
example of such prose rhythm that is none-the-
less as evocative and musical as a finely delivered
blank verse passage ;

“ Infinite being loses itself in the appearance
of non-being and emerges in the appearance of a
finite Soul ; infinite consciousness loses itself in the
appearance of a vast indeterminate inconscience
and emerges in the appearance of a superficial
limited consciousness ; infinite self-sustaining
force loses itself in the appearance of a chaos
of atoms and emerges in the appearance of the
insecure balance of a world ; infinite Delight loses
itself in the appearance of an insensible Matter

17

I. From an unpubli-shed poem by Sri Aurobindo.

259

SRI ADKOBlNUO

and emerges in the appearance of a discordant
rhythm of varied pain, pleasure and neutral feel-
ing, love, hatred and indifference ; infinite unity
loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of multi-
plicity and emerges in a discord of forces and beings
which seek to recover unity by possessing, dis-
solving and devouring each other.

A timid writer might have attempted elegant varia-
tion in the wrong places and refrained from repeat-
ing the clauses " loses itself in the appearance ”
and “ emerges in the appearance ” no less than five
times in the course of a single sentence ; but Sri
Aurobindo had courage enough, not only to call a
spade a spade, but to call it five times a spade ;
and the repetitions, in result, sound like refrains
contributing to the rich orchestration of the whole
passage.

Again, how admirable — ^metallic in its hardness
and lucid clarity — is a summing up like this :

" This then is the origin, this the nature,
these the boundaries of the Ignorance. Its
origin is a limitation of knowledge, its distinc-
tive character a separation of the being from its
own integrality and entire reality ; its boundaries
are determined by this separative development
of the consciousness, for it shuts us to our
true self and to the true self and whole nature
of tilings and obliges us to live in an apparent

17 *

I. The Life Divine, I, p. 167.

360

ARYA

surface existence.”^

It is, of course, not a nursery rhyme about Jack
and Jill going up a hill to fetch water in a pail ;
it is the crest of an argument that has taken Sri
Aurobindo some five hundred pages to elaborate.
But it is not spoilt by any avoidable obscurity.
Here are some more specimens of such granite
phrasing picked at random from these two books :
“ When we withdraw our gaze from its
egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting
interests and look upon the world with dis-
passionate and curious eyes that search only
for the Truth, our first result is the perception
of a boundless energy of infinite existence, in-
finite movement, infinite activity pouring itself
out in limitless space, in eternal Time, an existence
that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or
any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the
grandiose products of aeons are but the dust
of a moment and in whose incalculable sum
numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm.”^
“ All Nature’s transformations do indeed
wear the appearance of a miracle, but it is a miracle
with a method : her largest strides are taken over
an assured ground, her swiftest leaps are from
a base that gives security and certainty to the
evolutionary saltus ; a secret all-wisdom governs

1. The Life Divine, 11 , p. 517.

2. Ibid., I, p. 108.

SRI AUROiJlNJLJU

everything in her, even the steps and processes
that seem to be most unaccountable.”^

" The love of the world spiritualized, changed
from a sense-experience to a soul-experience,
is founded on the love of God and in that love
there is no peril and no shortcoming. Fear and
disgust of the world may often be necessary
for the recoil from the lower nature, for it is really
the fear and disgust of our own ego which reflects
itself in the world. But to see God in the world
is to fear nothing, it is to embrace all in the being
of God ; to see all as the Divine is to hate and
loathe nothing, but love God in the world and
the world in God.”^

One comes across many such passages in the
body of Sri Aurobindo’s prose-writings, and indeed
their balance, their perspicacity and the sheer vigour
of their phrasing are almost as worthy of reverent
study as are their logical structure and their close-
grained fabric of thought.

VIII

Not infrequently, however, Sri Aurobindo’s
prose art emits flashes of poetry which subtly illu-
mine and transfigure whole sentences and para-
graphs. Simile and metaphor trespass upon the

1. The Life Divine, II, p. 975.

2. Essays on the Gita, I, p. 359,

ARifA

domain of cogent prose and language crystallizes
into glittering images like these :

‘‘We do not belong to the past dawns, but
to the noons of the future.*'^

“For now the world Being appears to him
as the body of God ensouled by the eternal Time-
Spirit and with its majestic and dreadful voice
missions him to the crash of the battle.’’^

“ It has enormous burning eyes ; it has mouths
that gape to devour terrible with many tusks of
destruction ; it has faces like the fires of Death
and Time.”®

. .She labours to fill every rift with ore,
occupy every inch with plenty.”^

“ He bade us leave the canine method of
agitation for the leonine.”®

“ Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and
intellectual reasoning throned in the luminous
vast of illimitable self- vision.”®

In such sentences — their nmnber is legion — dia-
lectical skill gives place to direct vision, the knife-
edge clarity and sharpness of prose dissolve into
poetic imagery and symbolism ; and Sri Aurobindo
is seen to be poet no less than the wielder of an
animated and effective English prose style.

1 . Essays on the Gita, I, p. I3.

2. Ibid., II, p. 59.

3. Ibid., II, p. 178.

4. The Renaissance in India, p. 14.

5. Bankm-Tilak-Dayananda, p. ii.
■6 The Life Divine, I, p. 183.

263

SRI AUKOiilNDO

Some of Sri Aurobindo’s characteristically epi-
grammatic or aphoristic bits of prose are contained
in Thoughts and Glimpses and other “ minor ”
works and letters to disciples. One is occasionally
overwhelmed by a whole shower of epigrams as
in :

“ What is there new that we have yet to
accomplish ? Love, for as yet we have only
■ accomplished hatred and self-pleasing ; Know-
ledge, for as yet we have only accomplished
error and perception and conceiving ; Bliss, for
as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and
pain and indifference ; Power, for as yet we have
only accomplished weakness and effort and a
defeated victory ; Life, for as yet we have only
accomplished birth and growth and dying ; Unity,
for as yet we have only accomplished war and
association.

In a word, godhead ; to remake ourselves in
the divine image.

" Love is the keynote, Joy is the music. Power
is the strain. Knowledge is the performer, the
infinite All is the composer and audience. We
know only the preliminary discords which are
as fierce as the harmony shall be great ; but we
shall arrive surely at the fugue of the divine
Beatitudes.”^

1. Thoughts and Glimpses, pp. 6-7.

2. Ibid., p. 18,

364

AHYA

Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo’s wit and imagination
fuse into gem-like images, fascinating, clear-cut
and profoundly true ;

“ God and Nature are like a boy and girl
at play and in love.

They hide and run from each other when
glimpsed so that they may be sought after and
chased and captured.”^

“What is God after all ? An eternal child
playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.”®
” World, then, is the play of the Mother of
things moved to cast Herself for ever into infinite
forms and avid of eternally outpouring experien-
ces.”®

How very pretty, you'll say, but you’ll also add,
how suggestive and how very true ! The author of
The Life Divine and the other Himalayan sequences
in the Arya is not the crusty metaphysician some
take him to be, — he was a sensitive humanist and
poet before ever he dreamed of Yoga, and he remains
a humanist and poet still !

1. Thoughts and Ghmpses, p. 14.
a. Ibid,, p. II.

3. The Life Divine, I, p. 155*

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE LIFE DIVINE

I

In the course of a letter to a disciple written in
1930, Sri Aurobindo carefully differentiated between
the philosophical systems of the West and the East,
between Western Metaphysics and the Yoga of the
Indian saints and system-builders. In the West,
the supreme instrument of knowledge has been
regarded to be thought, intellect, the logical reason ;
" even spiritual experience has been summoned to
pass the tests of the intellect, if it is to be held
valid In India the position has been just the
reverse ; in the East generally, in India particularly
and continuously, while no doubt the metaphysical
thinkers have tried to approach ultimate Reality
through the intellect, they have given such mental
constructions only a secondary status. On the
other hand, “ the first rank has always been given
to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual
experience”^; without their corroboration, mere

1. The Riddle of this World, p. 29.

2. Ibid., p. 28.

'>66

LliJi OIVINE

intellectual constructions have been dismissed as
useless. Further, the Indian metaphysical thinker
has almost always been a Yogi also, one who has
armed his philosophy “ with a practical way of
reaching to the supreme state of consciousness, so
that even when one begins with Thought, the aim
is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental
thinking.”^ The central problems of philosophy
were formulated by Immanuel Kant in the form of
three questions ; what can I know ? what ought I
to do ? and what may I hope for ? These questions
are akin to the Indian concepts of tattva, hita and
purushartha ; but all have spiritual experience as
their base, their fertilizing source, their principal
ground of justification.

Sri Aurobindo's major philosophical or semi-
philosophical treatises also concern themselves with
these questions, these concepts ; but the emphasis
varies, the connotation is wider. His ideal is not
the realization of a personal release from samsara,
a personal immortality, a personal immersion in
the bliss of Brahman, now or later, here or else-
where ; it is rather the participation in the Life
Divine here and now. That is — ^that ought to be —
our goal ; and we can reach it !

The goal that Sri Aurobindo places before us is
thus the establishment of a Divine Life here —
" upon this bank and shoal of time” — and a full

I The Riddle of this World, p. 28.

267

SRi AUKOBINJOO

participation in its free and blissful and purposive
life. But the goal has yet to be reached ; it has
beckoned to us from afar for ages and ages, and
always, as men approached it, it disconcertingly
receded into the distance. As Mr. Aldous Huxley,
speaking for himself and many millions of other
men and women, writes rather wistfully and resign-
edly : “ The earthly paradise, the earthly paradise I

With what longing, between the bars of my tempera-
ment, do I peer at its bright landscape, how
voluptuously sniff at its perfumes of hay and
raspberries, of honeysuckle and roast duck, of
sun- warmed flesh and nectariness of the sea ! But
the bars are solid ; the earthly paradise is always
on the further side. Self-hindered, I cannot enter
and make myself at home .... The mind is its own
place and its tendency is always to see heaven in
some other place.

But others have told us, in ancient no less than
in modern times, that heaven need not be “ in some
other place.” ” The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you,” said one of the wisest of the wise men, one
of the divine men, one of the Messiahs, that this
earth has thrown up in its long story of tribulation
and travail ; and a gifted English poetess has re-
marked :

" Earth’s crammed with heaven.

And every common bush afire with God.”^

1. Texts and Pretexts (Phoenix Edition), p. 75.

2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

-’hR

lilt, LliJt OIViNJi

And it is hardly necessary to multiply such assure
ances and exhortations. The question therefore
rings more insistently than ever and demands an
answer : is it possible — ^will it ever be possible — to
achieve in our midst “ the Life Divine ”?

Sri Aurobindo knows that the Life Divine can
and must be realized on the earth. He knows
where humanity stands today ; he knows the goal
that humanity should keep before it ; and he knows
also how humanity should march from one post of
fulfilment to another and yet another till at last the
goal itself is reached. Where do we stand ?
What is our goal ? How shall we — -when shall we
— reach it ? These are the questions (not very
dissimilar to the questions that Kant posed) that
Sri Aurobindo answers in his weighty and monu-
mental treatises.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Sri
Aurobindo knew — knew by direct vision and spiri-
tual experience — for an incontestable reality the
things he wrote about in his Arya sequences ; as he
explained in one of the later issues of the Arya :

" The spiritual experience and the general
truths on which such an attempt should be
based were already present to us ... . but the
complete intellectual statement of them and their
results and issues had to be found. This
meant a continuous thinking, a high and subtle
and difficult thinking on several lines, and this
strain, which we had to impose on ourselves, we

269

SRI AUROBIMUO

are obliged to impose also on our readers.”^
People who are accustomed to read philosophy in a
tabloid form in Sunday Illustrated newspapers or
in two-penny booklets cannot but be scared away
by this many-sided manifestation of a " high and
subtle and difficult thinking even many students
of philosophy say that they find The Life Divine a
tough and taxing proposition. But the thinking
had to be done, the translation of the thought into
word had also to be done ; and Sri Aurobindo
has done humanity these two great services. On
its part, humanity too has to make an effort — ^the
“ high and subtle and difficult ” effort — to follow
Sri Aurobindo ’s lead and allow him to complete his
mission.

In the Ary a, Sri Aurobindo gave the place of
honour always to The Life Divine sequence, in which
he sought to work out the central tenets of his
philosophy of life — ^the philosophy of the Life
Divine— from the purely metaphysical standpoint.
Man, said Sri Aurobindo, should transcend his
human limitations and grow into the fullness and
rich splendour of the Divine ; he should achieve an
earthly immortality ; and even his terrestrial life
should assume a divine character and “status-
dynamis." And the sixteen hundred and odd
luminous and thoughtful pages of The Life Divine
are but devoted to the elaboration of the raison

I. Arya, July 1918.

270

THE LIFE DIVINE

d’etre of this the purposive core of Sri Aurobindo’s
philosophy and teaching.

11

There is no question, of course, of summarizing
The Life Divine — such an attempt is beyond the
scope of the present work. We can only roughly
indicate here the main lines of inquiry pursued in
the book. Although both the first and second
volumes of The Life Divine contain twenty-eight
chapters each, the second volume is nearly three
times as voluminous as the first. And for a very
good reason : for, while the first volume tells us
what is our goal, the second has to show — and this
is a much more laborious and difficult proceeding —
how and whether at all we may hope to reach it.
Even so the how of the process is only described
with a view to convincing the intellect, the logical
reason ; the description of the how of the process
from a purely practical standpoint is reserved for
another treatise, The Synthesis of Yoga,

The first volume of The Life Divine, then, is an
attempt, yet one more attempt, the most recent
and perhaps the final attempt, to describe ” Omni-
present Reality and the Universe,” to tell us what
we are in appearance, where we are in the evolu-
tionary scale, what we are in our veiled and inmost
essence, where we are to rest when the evolutionary
ascent has realized the promise of its impulsion
and achieved thereby its cosmic purpose. Sri

271

SRI AUROBIIvJiJO

are obliged to impose also on our readers.”^
People who are accustomed to read philosophy in a
tabloid form in Sunday Illustrated newspapers or
in two-penny booklets cannot but be scared away
by this many-sided manifestation of a “ high and
subtle and difficult thinking even many students
of philosophy say that they find The Life Divine a
tough and taxing proposition. But the thinking
had to be done, the translation of the thought into
word had also to be done ; and Sri Aurobindo
has done humanity these two great services. On
its part, humanity too has to make an effort — ^the
“high and subtle and difficult” effort — to follow
Sri Aurobindo’ s lead and allow him to complete his
mission.

In the Arya, Sri Aurobindo gave the place of
honour always to The Life Divine sequence, in which
he sought to work out the central tenets of his
philosophy of life — the philosophy of the Life
Divine — ^from the purely metaphysical standpoint.
Man, said Sri Aurobindo, should transcend his
human limitations and grow into the fullness and
rich splendour of the Divine ; he should achieve an
earthly immortality ; and even his terrestrial life
should assume a divine character and “status-
dynamis.” And the sixteen hundred and odd
luminous and thoughtful pages of The Life Divine
are but devoted to the elaboration of the raison

I, Arya, July 1918.

270

IHJU LJUbii UlVlNJi

d’ etre of this the purposive core of Sri Aurobindo’s
philosophy and teaching.

II

There is no question, of course, of summarizing
The Life Divine — such an attempt is beyond the
scope of the present work. We can only roughly
indicate here the main lines of inquiry pursued in
the book. Although both the first and second
volumes of The Life Divine contain twenty-eight
chapters each, the second volume is nearly three
times as voluminous as the first. And for a very
good reason : for, while the first volume tells us
what is our goal, the second has to show — and this
is a much more laborious and difficult proceeding —
hoio and whether at all we may hope to reach it.
Even so the how of the process is only described
with a view to convincing the intellect, the logical
reason ; the description of the how of the process
from a purely practical standpoint is reserved for
another treatise, The Synthesis of Yoga.

The first volume of The Life Divine, then, is an
attempt, yet one more attempt, the most recent
and perhaps the final attempt, to describe “ Omni-
present Reality and the Universe," to teU us what
we are in appearance, where we are in the evolu-
tionary scale, what we are in our veiled and inmost
essence, where we are to rest when the evolutionary
ascent has realized the promise of its impulsion
and achieved thereby its cosmic purpose. Sri

271

SRI AUROBINJJO

Aurobindo begins by saying that “ the earliest
preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts
and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate pre-
occupation ” is “ the divination of godhead, the
impulse towards perfection, the search after pure
Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret
immortality.”^ Manrestlessly seeks happiness, har-
mony, fulfilment, felicity — call it what you will —
he has sought them through all the dead aeons of
yesterday and the day before — and, there's the rub,
he cannot find them here, or he finds them only to
lose them, and he often loses them too ” not with
a bang but a whimper.” Sensitive souls cannot
help registering ever and always the obscure vibra-
tions of the " still sad music of humanity,” music
that gently moans the frustrations and manifold
hurts of life, music that reiterates the apparently
unavoidable truth, ” Sorrow Is ”; power corrupts,
knowledge confounds, friendship fails, love degene-
rates, and life is seen in consequence as a thing
savourless or worse. How then can we hope to
run felicity aground, how can we hope to churn
out of the ambiguous shadows and muddy waters
of earthly life the true nectar of abiding inward
happiness ?

Different people have tried to solve the problem
in different ways. There was Papa Karamazov in
Dostoevsky’s novel whose attitude was summed up

I. The Life Divine, I, pp. 1-2.

272

JlJrti^ LliK DIVINE

in the words : “You cannot solve the riddle of
this world ; take life as it is ; drink life literally to
the lees ; life is worth living so long as there is an
ounce of vodka or a single woman in this world.”
His second son, Ivan the intellectual sceptic, might
call it “ an insect’s life ” — ^but old Karamazov recks
not ; he would live his own life to the last. Even
if materialism does not quite degenerate into
Karamazovism, it is nevertheless an unbalanced
view of life, a view that denies to life both the
nourisliment of the Spirit and the hope of tomonow.
If the “ Materialist Denial ” is false, one-sided,
and even dangerous, the ‘ Refusal of the Ascetic ’
is no less false, it is equally one-sided, and it may
also prove a dangerous barrier on our path. The
stoic and the ascetic would argue thus : life is but
thus and thus ; misery and pain do constitute the
badge of our lives ; we are hedged on all sides by
the insuperable limitations of death, desire and
incapacity ; we are certainly fated to undergo

The weariness, the fever, and the fret.

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan. . . .

Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies ....
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs^;

and hence we should learn (the only knowledge that
is worth our while to learn) to minimize our demands
upon life. And, after all, life is only for a brief

I. Keats, Ode to a Nightingale.

273

SRI AUKOBIMUO

now, let us then brave its ills with an unblenching
stare, nay let us ignore them — and soon the ever-
lasting Night must descend upon us all and give
us release from samsafa, the interlocked fatuity of
terrestrial life ; and we will then leave the very
smell of the earth behind, we will then surely taste
the joys of Heaven, the splendours of Vaicuntha,
the bliss of inapprehensible Sachchidananda !

This is the human predicament, then ; " Sorrow
Is,” Evil and Pain disagreeably flourish under our
very eyes, and there are, apparently, only two ways
of combating, or rather of by-passing, the Enemy, —
the materialistic way of making the best of a
bad job, or even revelling in its very sloth and
imperfection, and the stoical way of patient suffer-
ance and resignation or the ascetic way of deter-
mined ignoration of life’s tribulations and limita-
tions. The materialist would affirm matter, matter
only and matter alone, but deny the Spirit ; he would
swear by the earth and its million-hued concomit-
ants, but deny Heaven and its unvisioned sights
and voiceless harmonies. The ascetic, perching
himself perilously at the other end of the scale,
would mortify the flesh, but fiercely affirm the
Spirit ; he would deny the evidence of his senses
and ignore the earth, but he would let his fancy
roam and infer or anticipate the splendours of
Heaven.

And yet, notwithstanding the materialist and
the ascetic, the cry goes forth — ^has ever gone

374

IWJL, xjaa DIVINE

forth — ^from the depths of the human heart that
somehow and somewhen we must seek and find
Heaven here, we must find it and retain it here for
ever. We cannot deny the Spirit, for the whole
obscure current of our existence is up against the
tongue’s vain denial of the omnipresent Reality.
Nor can we curb the flesh, inflict on it a thousand
and one injuries of commission and omission, — •
for, not only is the process painful and laborious,
but the endeavour is in most cases foredoomed to
disastrous failure. Matter, flesh, the whole objec-
tive world, these are bound, sooner or later, to
take their fearful revenge on all but the staunchest
of these knight-errants of the Spirit. Likewise,
Heaven is implicated all the time even in our own
“ too sullied earth,” just as very earth is in-
extricably involved in all the splendorous concerns
of Heaven. We want an all-inclusive, rather than
an one-sided, approach to the citadel of Reality ;
we want an integral, rather than a partial, world-
view, and we want a philosophy that consists of a
series of affirmations rather than a series of negations
and denials. Sri Aurobindo gives us what mankind
has long been waiting for — ^a philosophy of affirma-
tions and a philosophy of hope.

Wliile Sri Aurobindo repudiates both the
” Materialist Denial ” and the ” Refusal of the
Ascetic,” he readily recognizes ” the enormous, the
indispensable utility of the very brief period of
rationalistic Materialism through which humanity

18

27S

SRI AUKORIMUU

has been passing as also the “ still greater service
rendered by Asceticism to Life modern Materia-
lism, in the main a Western phenomenon, has
rendered a signal service to questing Man by
providing him with a considerable body of know-
ledge regarding the lower planes of existence just
as Asceticism, in the main an Eastern and even
peculiarly an Indian phenomenon, has served Man
by boldly adventuring into the Unknown and
giving him intimations of the contours of the Spirit.
And yet neither the Western revolt of Matter
against Spirit nor the Indian revolt of Spirit against
Matter can yield a harmony, a life-giving and
light-giving philosophy. We must, therefore, ad-
mit “ both the claim of the pure Spirit to manifest
in us its absolute freedom and the claim of universal
Matter to be the mould and condition of our
manifestation.”® The Materialist .Denial is one
version of the Reality, the Refusal of the Ascetic
is its opposite version ; they are alike severely
partial versions, and hence omnipresent Reality
must include and exceed both of them, and yet
remain Itself, the One without a second. This is
the base on which Sri Aurobindo constructs his
metaphysics of the Life Divine, the base on which
he would rear a balanced life participating in the

1. The Life Divine, I, p. 15.

2. Ibid., 1 , p. 37.

3. Ibid., I, p. 38.

276

•JLHii l^lJbil JJIViNfc

4^

perfections—Truth, Beauty and Goodness ; and
hence he has a message for the West as well as the
East, and neither the Occident nor the Orient can
progress on the right path so long as they do not
hearken to this beckoning voice from Pondicherry.^

Ill

Omnipresent Reality thus includes Matter at
one end and Spirit at the opposite end ; such a
conception, however, will satisfy the human mind
only if we can correctly and accurately mark the
different stages by wliich Matter is involved from
Spirit or Spirit is evolved from Matter. The
stages in the “ ascent ” or “ evolution ” are, accord-
ing to Sri Aurobindo, Matter, Life, Psyche, Mind,
Supermind, Bliss, Consciousness-Force, Existence ;
the stages in the " descent '' or “ involution " are,
conversely. Existence, Consciousness-Force, Bliss,
Supermind, Mind, Psyche, Life, Matter. Sri
Aurobindo has given his own connotations to some
of these terms and it is not possible to go into it
all here. The supreme Reality is envisaged as
Sachchidananda ; it is Pure Existence, it is Existence
that is both Will and Force, and above all, it is
blissful Existence. And yet it is this Sachchida-
nanda that in the process of its " descent ” or “ in-

I. Vide Review of Maitn’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Sri
Aurobindo in the Times Literary Supplement, July g, 1943.

277

bKi. AUKOBiNUO

volution ” causes the multiplicity, the disharmony,
the oceanic spectacle of frustration and suffering,
that we seem to discover in the phenomenal world.
The modem science of Biology has made it easy
for us to understand the evolution of life from in-
conscient matter, the evolution or emergence of
Mind from life ; inanimate matter, plant and animal,
and rational man seem to be quite obviously three
stages, three very distinct stages, in evolution. But
the human mind cannot as yet — as a general rule —
look beyond itself ; it cannot see in the phenomenal
world of the dualities a reflection or an immanence
or play of manifestation of Bliss-Consciousness-
Force- Existence, of the triune self-glory of Sach-
chidananda. It is as though a wall separates the two
halves of the posited omnipresent Reality ; it is as
though the transparency of the glass is obscured and
darkened by a heavy coating of Mercury on the other
side — with the result that, as Mr. Huxley pointed
out, the paradise of Sachchidananda is always “ on
the other side.”

Sri Aurobindo’s integral view of Reality recog-
nizes the existence of the wall, of the heavy coating
of Mercury, of the bars of the cage ; but if we
make the effort, and if the time is opportune, the
wall can be pulled down, the coating of Mercury
cleansed, the bars filed away and thrown out.
The '* new ” elements in Sri Aurobindo’s meta-
physics of the Life Divine are thus three in number :
flrstly, the conception of a simultaneous process of

278

Lluja, UIVIN

evolution -involution or ascent-descent ; secondly,
the principle of integration at every stage of ascent-
descent or evolution-involution ; and thirdly, the
conception of the Supermind, — Supermind that
waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reason-
ing,” separated from them by the wall, the coating,
the bars, the veil of Ignorance, “ Supermind that is
directly truth- conscious, a divine power of im-
mediate, inherent and spontaneous knowledge.”^
With the sovereign help of these dynamic concepts,
Sri Aurobindo is able to sketch in the first volume
of The Life Divine a convincing survey of Sach-
chidananda, clearly marking and describing ” its
main realms and principalities.”^

The words "ascent” and "descent” used in
our discussion are to be understood in a psycholo-
gical and not in a strictly material sense, for we
are here using " a temporal figure in' respect of an
extra-temporal fact.”^ The stages in the journey,

then, ^the upward journey from Matter to Spirit

and the downward journey from Spirit to Matter —
are to be conceived as successive attempts at a
dynamic comprehension of the One in the Many
or the Many in the One, as progressive attempts
to reduce more and more, and finally to eliminate
altogether, the " immense hiatus that seems to exist

1. Arya, VI, p. 647.

2. R. Vaidyanathaswami, in the Indian Express, August 15, 1940.

3. Nolmi Kanta Gupta (Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1943, p. 4).

279

SRI AUKOBINUO

between Supramental Truth-Consciousness and the
Mind in the Ignorance.”^

Unlike the materialist, Sri Aurobindo rightly
points out that life cannot emerge from matter
unless it is already involved in it ; it is not a play of
unpredictable accident that brings out the emergent,
but rather a preordained event in the cosmic plan.
Thus even in Matter all the higher emergents, the
highest included, are latent; hence the Taittiriya
Upanishad maintains that “ Matter is Brahman.”
The process of evolution or ascent is thus but a
drawing out of the powers that are already nascent
within, it is in the nature of a legitimate and inevi-
table self- exceeding ; this act of ascent or evolution
or self-exceeding is concurrent with a corresponding
act of descent or involution or self-limitation from
above. Ascent thus ever goes hand in hand with
descent, emergence thus ever brings about integra-
tion in its wake. Life evolved out of matter, it
energized matter, it did not deny or throw away
matter ; as it were, matter was lifted out of its sheer
inconscience and made conscious or semi-conscious
in plant and animal life. Likewise, when mind
emerged out of life, man the mental being did
not deny — he could not deny — either life or matter ;
he achieved a new integration, a new harmony of
all three, with the psyche — ‘‘the animating principle
in man. . . .the source of all vital activities, rational

I. The Life Divine, I, p. 416.

XB.£. LU'£, DIVINK

or irrational — as the true master of the ceremo-
nies, both the " desire-soul which strives for the
possession and delight of things " and the more
deeply and obscurely lodged “ true psychic entity
which is the real repository of the experiences of
the spirit.”® That is why Sri Aurobindo envisages
the progressive movement of Consciousness as a
threefold movement : an upward movement — the
evolution or the ascent or the emergence ; a down-
ward movement — the involution or the descent or
the immersion ; and an inward movement — ^the
integration, or total unification, being the supreme
result of the linking up with the true psychic entity
or Soul.

The position now is — ^and this is Sri Aurobindo’s
answer to the question, Where do we stand ? — ^that
the movement of evolution has reached the level
of the Mind. The Mind was a valuable emergent
at a particular stage in evolution ; but it now displays
the very defects of its great qualities. Even Roches-
ter found it necessary to emphasize its limitations :

Reason, an Ignis Fatuus in the mind,

Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,

Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes
Through error’s fenny bogs and thorny brakes,

Whilst the misguided follower climbs in vain
Mountains of whimsies heaped in his own brain ;

Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into doubt’s boundless sea

1. The Oxford English Dictionary.

2. The Life Divine, I, pp. 402-3.

SRI Iaurobindo

“ Mind is that which does not know, which tries
to know and which never knows except as in a
glass darkly. It is the power which interprets
truth of universal existence for the practical uses
of a certain order of things ; it is not the power
which knows and guides that existence and therefore
it cannot be the power which created or manifested
it."^ Or, as Sri Aurobindo puts it very succinctly
elsewhere, ” Reason was the helper ; Reason is the
bar ’’P

When, as a result of the next evolutionary
jump. Mind pierces through the lid of the Ignorance
and touches the plane of Supramental Conscious-
ness, man will have passed beyond knowings, he
will have acquired the omniscience and omnipotence
of superconscient Knowledge. The discords of
the world will vanish, the blind play of forces will
acquire the potency of Conscious-Force, and the
spectacle of the dualities will be transfigured into a
manifestation of the lila of the Supreme. Man will
then realize that World-existence is indeed “ the
ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body
of the God numberlessly to the view : it leaves
that white existence precisely where and what it
was, ever is and ever will be ; its sole absolute
object is the joy of the dancing.”^

1. The Life Divine, I, pp. 178-9.

2. Thoughts and Glimpses, p. i.

3. The Life Divine, II, p. 119.

IHi. Lii'jc. DIVINE

IV

This in itself is by no means a “ new ” ideal
placed before humanity ; for many other thinkers
and seers in the recent and remote past also glimpsed
the possibility, if not always the inevitability, of the
mind successfully casting aside its Ignorance and
attaining to Superconscience. “ It is a keen sense
of this possibility,” says Sri Aurobindo, ” which
has taken different shapes and persisted through
the centuries — the perfectibility of man, the per-
fectibility of society, the Alwar’s vision of the
descent of Vishnu and the Gods upon earth, the
reign of the saints, sadhunam rajyam, the city of
God, the millennium, the new heaven and earth
of the Apocalypse. But these intuitions have
lacked a basis of assured knowledge and the mind
of man has remained swinging between a bright
future hope and a grey present certitude.”^ It is
Sri Aurobindo’s mission to supply this “ basis of
assured knowledge ” so that the envisaged possibility
may indeed become a distinctive and splendorous.
actuality.

The second volume of The Life Divine sets out
to show how we may hope to achieve the desired
transformation of our limited, ignorant, and self-
divided earth nature. At the outset Sri Aurobindo-
tackles the problem of the origin of this Ignorance—

2 The Life Divine, II, pp. 290-1.'

283

SRI aurobinuo

the Ignorance that baffles us at every turn, that
checkmates us in every direction, that perverts
our purposes and makes them awry and futile.
If the Universe is a creation of the Infinite Cons-
ciousness, how then did Ignorance originate ? It
cannot be part and parcel of inconscient Matter,
for Matter after all ultimately outgrows the limita-
tions of the Ignorance ; neither can Ignorance be
part and parcel of the Spirit, — for in that case
Reality will be self-divided at the fountain source
itself, an altogether impossible supposition ! What,
then, is Ignorance ?

Sri Aurobindo solves this problem by affirming
that Ignorance too is Knowledge — only it is partial
or imperfect knowledge. He does not feel the
need to posit the existence of a beginningless power
that creates the illusions and unrealities of the
world ; on the contrary, Sri Aurobindo posits “ an
original, a supreme or cosmic Truth-Consciousness
creative of a true universe, but with mind acting in
that universe as an imperfect consciousness, ignor-
ant, partly knowing, partly not knowing, — a cons-
ciousness which is by its ignorance or limitation
of knowledge capable of error, mispresentation,
mistaken or misdirected development from the
known, of uncertain gropings towards the unknown,
of partial creations and buildings, a constant half-
position between truth and error, knowledge and
nescience.”^ It will be seen from this that there is

1. The Life Divine, II, pp. 217-8.

284

IHh LIFE DIVINE

a whole spiral of Knowledge or Consciousness ; at
the bottom it takes the form of nescience or incons-
cience, at the top it takes the form of Knowledge
or Superconscience ; and in the middle region
ruled by the divided mind, it takes the form of
partial (and hence imperfect or even wrong) know-
ledge or Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo thus makes
Maya and Avidya much less fearful things than
they are in the metaphysics of the great Sankara-
charya. Ignorance arises on the way and it will
also disappear on the way. It is neither beginning-
less Maya nor original Sin ; it is but a characteristic
feature at one stage in the descent of Consciousness ;
and when the counter-movement of ascent passes
that stage, Ignorance will inevitably cast off its
present badges of limitation and perversion, and
grow into real Knowledge, — Knowledge that
achieves a total compenetration of what does, what
knows, and what is.

But why should this Ignorance — even in this
less fearful and less permanent form — ever arise
at all ? In answering this important and almost
crucial question, Sri Aurobindo takes recourse to
the concept of Tapas or “ concentration of power
of consciousness ” to achieve a particular end,
either a passive state of equilibrium of forces or an
active state of forces in motion. He quotes this
well-known passage from the Taittiriya Upanishad :

“ He desired, ‘ May I be Many,’ he con-
centrated in Tapas, by Tapas he created the

SRI AUKOBINJJO

world ; creating, he entered into it ; entering, he
became the existent and the beyond- existence,
he became the expressed and the unexpressed,
he became knowledge and the ignorance, he
became the truth and the falsehood : he became
the truth, even all this whatsoever that is.”^

Sri Aurobindo thinks that Tapas is the charac-
teristic of sat as well as of chit, of the passive as
well as the active Brahman, and it is also the ground
plan of the Bliss of Brahman, anandamaya ; and
therefore he argues that the origin of the Ignorance
must be sought for “ in some self-absorbed con-
centration of Tapas, of Conscious-Force in action
on a separate movement of the Force ; to us this
takes the appearance of mind identifying itself
with the separate movement and identifying itself
also in the movement separately with each of the
forms resulting from it. So it builds a wall of
separation which shuts out the consciousness in
each form from awareness of its own total self, of
other embodied consciousnesses and of universal
being.”®

The Ignorance, then, is a necessary rung or
resting-place in the descending and ascending
movements of Consciousness ; the " fall ” is only a
preparation — a strategic retreat — that facilitates the
fulfilment of the Divine purpose :

” The Ignorance is a necessary, though quite

1. The Life Divine, II, p. 413.

2. Ibid., II, p, 435.

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iJdii LliJi UlVINji

subordinate term which the universal Knowledge
has imposed on itself that that movement might
be possible, — not a blunder and a fall, but a
purposeful descent, not a curse, but a divine
opportunity. To find and embody the All-
Delight in an intense summary of its manifoldness,
to achieve a possibility of the infinite Existence
which could not be achieved in other conditions,
to create out of Matter a temple of the Divinity
would seem to be the task imposed on the spirit
bom into the material universe.”^

In Ignorance and Nescience we have no death,
only a frenzy or a swoon of the All-Knowledge and
All-Will ; this swoon and this frenzy are not eternal,
they have come up to the surface of existence for a
little while and they will be exceeded when they
have fulfilled their cosmic tasks.

Meanwhile Man, who has awakened from the
swoon of inconscience and nescience, and is now
involved in the gyrations of the frenzy of Ignorance
engenders in his midst other byproducts of his
limited state ; it would thus appear that “ a limited
consciousness growing out of nescience is the
source of error, a personal attachment to the limit-
ation and the error bom of it the source of falsity,
a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego

the source of evil because it does these things

as a separate ego for its separate advantage and not

I. The Life Divine, 11 , p. 453.

287

SRI AUROBIMUO

by conscious interchange and mutuality, not by
unity, life-discord, conflict, disharmony arise, and
it is the products of this life-discord and disharmony
that we call wrong and evil. Nature accepts them
because they are necessary circumstances of the
evolution . , . The evolutionary intention acts through
the evil as through the good .... this is the reason
why we see evil coming out of what we call good
and good coming out of what we call evil ; and,
if we see even what was thought to be evil coming
to be accepted as good, what was thought to be
good accepted as evil, it is because our standards
of both are evolutionary, limited and mutable.”^
This is how Sri Aurobindo explains the origin,
the distinctive character, and the inevitable con-
comitants of the Ignorance ; and therefore " a
return or a progress to integrality, a disappearance
of the limitation, a breaking down of separativeness,
an overpassing of boundaries, a recovery of our
essential and whole reality must be the sign and
opposite character of the inner turn towards
Knowledge. To the task of describing this
“ inner turn towards Knowledge " — ^the spiritual
evolution — Sri Aurobindo addresses himself in the
second part of the second volume of The Life
Divine.

V

“ The principle of the process of evolution is a

1. The Life Divine, II, pp. 501-3.

2. Ibid,, II, p. 517.

^88

iJtili LIf£. jDlVINjt

foundation, from that foundation an ascent, in that
ascent a reversal of consciousness and, from the
greater height and wideness gained, an action of
change and new integration of the whole nature.”^
This is Sri Aurobindo’s classical definition and
description of the evolutionary process. Step by
step — from Matter to Life, from Life to Mind,
from Mind to Supermind, from Supermind to
Sachchidananda — consciousness has to be organized,
heightened and made at last all-knowing and all-
powerful and all -blissful. The evolutionary process
having now reached the rung of the Mind, the
next forward leap has to achieve the supramental-
ization of the consciousness, completing the passage
“ from the evolution in the Ignorance to a greater
evolution in the Knowledge, founded and proceeding
in the light of the Superconscient and no longer in
the darkness of the Ignorance and Inconscience.” ^
And yet this transition cannot be effected by
aspiring Man alone ; his endeavour to forge ahead
in the evolutionary scale must be met half-way by a
corresponding descent of consciousness also. This
is how, too, it will happen, as it has already happened
in the earlier sweeps of the evolutionary process.
Human aspiration will resolve itself into an upsurg-
ing engine of undivided effort to exceed the limita-
tions of the Ignorance ; and, simultaneously, the

1. The Life Divine, 11 , p. 656.

2. Ihid., II, p. 81 1,

28 q

SRI AUKUUINDO

•opportune descent of Consciousness will flood the
shining tablelands of human effort and effect a
radical change in the consciousness and achieve a
new integration of the whole nature; “the two
movements .... are the two ends of a single cons-
ciousness whose motions, now separated from each
■other, must join if the life power is to have its more
and more perfect action and fulfilment or the trans-
formation for which we hope. The vital being
with the life-force in it is one of these ends ; the
other is a latent dynamic power of the higher cons-
ciousness through which the Divine Truth can
act, take hold of the vital and its life-force, and
use it for a great purpose here.”^

However, so great is the difference between the
states of the Mind in the Ignorance and Mind in
the Knowledge that Sri Aurobindo believes that
even this transition from the Mind to the Super-
mind is itself marked by various steps or resting
places or “ slow gradations ” on the way. These
discernible slow gradations — steps in the spiral of
ascent — are, respectively. Higher Mind, Illumined
Mind, Intuition, and Overmind ; and Mind starts
this particular segment of the evolutionary race,
and Supermind consummates it. It is only when
man's earth nature encompasses the great leap
from Mind to Supermind, touching the four sign-
posts of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition

1 . The Riddle of this World, p. i6.

290

IHii LIFE DIVINE

and Overmind on the way, — then indeed would Man
be able to complete the spiritual evolution, to fulfil
the evolutionary purpose, to exceed himself by
outgrowing the limitations of death, desire and
incapacity, and to partake once and for all in an
earthly immortality.

Sri Aurobindo has described with painstaking
accuracy and poetic vividness the varied stages of
Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Over-
mind in the twenty-sixth cliapter of the second
volume of The Life Divine f when the transforma-
tion is achieved at last, the resulting integral
knowledge will unify all things in the One, and
resolve all the chords and discords of terrestrial
life into the indivisible harmony of Sachchidananda.

The description of the nature and evolutionary
status of the Supermind (also variously called as
Real-Idea, Rita-cit, Vijnana, and Truth-Conscious-
ness) is, perhaps, the most original and valuable
part of The Life Divine. By seizing the full signi-
ficance of the Supermind and linking it up with the
rest of the available body of knowledge, Sri Auro-
bindo has been able to give us an utterly convincing
S5mthetic or integral view of omnipresent Reality.
Man can exceed his limitations ; he will exceed his
limitations ; and when this next evolutionary ex-
periment is concluded, he will have both the
knowledge and the power, the power no less than

I. Vide Appendix for a description of these intermediate stages.

291

19

SRI AUKOBilNDO

the joy that Supramental Truth- Consciousness
necessarily brings in its equipage : he will then
indeed become the Knowledge-Soul, the Vijnana-
maya-Purusha, and he will “ raise his total being
into the spiritual realm. No doubt, there will
be a further Beyond still ; for “ the Vijnanamaya
level is not the supreme plane of our Consciousness,
but a middle or link plane interposed between
the triune glory of the utter Spirit, the infinite
existence, consciousness and bliss, and our lower
triple being. But for -us, who are as yet only
wallowing in the mire of the lower hemisphere,
the Supramental level is itself so far oif, far above,
that we need not worry ourselves immediately
about this ” supreme ” plane of Consciousness.

We are assured by Sri Aurobindo in the most
categorical manner that it is not foolhardy on our
part to look forward to a supramental transformation
of our terrestrial existence : " the supramental
change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the
evolution of the earth-consciousness."® Sri Auro-
bindo, however, makes it very clear that the
supramental transformation of the life of an
individual here, another there, cannot in itself, or
by itself, usher in "a new Heaven and a new
Earth " in our midst : for, " while the individual

1. Arya, IV, p. 28.

2. Ibid., IV, p. 93.

3. The Mother, pp. 83-4.

19 *

292

iiili L 1 i;£, UlViXjti

must be the instrument and first field of the trans-
formation,” ” an isolated individual transformation
is not enough and may not be wholly feasible.
Even when achieved, the individual change will
have a permanent and cosmic significance only if
the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the
establishment of the supramental Consciousness-
Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial
workings of Nature, — in the same way in which
thinking Mind has been established through the
human evolution as an overtly operative power in
Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance
in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a
gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature.”^ If, thus, the
supramentalized individual — ^the Gnostic Being —
will only return to the world of widest commonalty
from the sun-lit heights of his vijnanamaya, he
must inevitably influence his surroundings and
” even the world of ignorance and inconscience
might discover its own submerged secret and begin
to realize in each lower degree its divine signi-
ficance.”^

This, then, is the hope, this the process ; but
when all this will take place nobody can tell. Mr.
Nolini Kanta Gupta says that “ the Day will come . , .
it may be today or tomorrow, it may be a decade
hence, or it may even be a century or a millennium

I. The Life Divine, II, p. 1021.
2 Ibid., II, p. 1022.

293

SRI aukobimoo

hence ; it will come all the same."^ But Sri Auro-
bindo himself seems to think — or at least to hope —
that the date of the supramental descent is not far
off, that the imminent conquest of the Asuric
forces that are now using the Axis Powers for their
own ends will, perhaps, create conditions auspicious
enough for the supramental descent to become a
distinct possibility. He also warns us not to
construct the Supramental Consciousness in the
image of the Mind ; for, if we worshipped a doll
filled with egregious mental stuff as if it were the
Supermind, when the genuine article descended at
last we shall be most disappointed indeed !

VI

In the foregoing pages we have tried to give
briefly — all too briefly — some of the leading ideas
in Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus, often in the
Master’s own words. The prospect that he holds
out before us is that of the gradual uprearing on
this earthly base of “ a life of spiritual and supra-
mental supermanhood,”^ the organization of the
“ constant miracle ” of the Life Divine. Even
this verbal formulation of the Promise is a thing
of good augury for Man, the self-divided and
anguished pilgrim starting on the road to Felicity ;

I. The Malady of the Century, p. 76.
3. The Life Divine, 11 , pp. 1181-3.

204

IHj^ UlViNJi

the Promise will spur him on, it will endow him
with the puissance to stand the shocks of the
journey, it will make his adhar a fit receptacle for
receiving and retaining the downpour of the spirit.

The Life Divine is the great book for the
emergence of which the Zeit Geist has been plying
long on the roaring loom of Time ; it is, among
text-books on Metaphysics, the book par excellence ;
it “ has the character of a perfectly natural and
inevitable synthesis of all that is valuable in the
various main lines of intellectual seeking and
vision, of aspiration and discipline, of upward
effort and aim, of the Ancient and the Modern
world, of the West and the East”^; and it has not
therefore been inaptly described as the last arch
in the “ bridge of thoughts and sighs which
spans the history of Aryan culture."^

The singularly synthetic quality of the treatise
is exemplified by the fact that members of different
faiths, partisans of different schools of philosophy,
admirers of different world-figures such as Plato,
Hegel, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sankara, Ramanuja,
all seem to find in The Life Divine a solution of
some of their most obstreperous difficulties. Dr.
Maitra sees many resemblances between the philo-
sophy of Bergson and the philosophy of Sri
Aurobindo ; Dr. Varadachari likewise sees resembl-

1. V. Chandrasekharam, Sri Aurobindo's “ The Life Divine," p. los-

2. S. K. Maitra, The Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, p. loS.

SRi AUROBiNiJO

ances between the world-views of Ramanuja and
Sri Aurobindo ; a devoted and widely-read Roman
Catholic thinks that The Life Divine reminds him
often of the structure as well as the thought-content
of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica ; and a
Virasaiva discovers strong similarities between the
sat-sthala philosophy of the Vachanakaras and the
evolutionary process described in The Life Divine !

And it is all as it should be ; for The Life Divine
is an attempt — a highly successful attempt — " to
synthesize all knowledge in an ordered and related
whole, in which the connection of one part with
another is shown to be inevitable.”^ These words
were written by Dr. Francis Aveling with reference
to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas ; but they
sound peculiarly appropriate today when applied
to the great achievement of Sri Aurobindo embodied
in his book of books, The Life Divine. As
a veteran professor of philosophy recently remarked,
in the course of a private conversation, ” After
reading The Life Divine, it is not necessary to read
any further ; the imperative thing now is to live
its message and to realize the promise held out
before us.”

VII

Having elaborated in The Life Divine the core
of his teaching from the standpoint of Metaphysics,

I. St. Thomas Aquinas (Edited by Fr. C. Lattey), p. m,

2q6

IJlli Lli-E UlVINE

Sri Aurobindo wished to show that, while his
teaching might come to us with the urgency of a
modern dynamism, it but enshrines, extends, and
fulfils the wisdom of the Vedic and Upanishadic
Seers and of the Author of the immortal Gita.
Accordingly, Sri Aurobindo attempted in his trans-
lations and commentaries on the Isha and Kena
Upanishads, his translations of the Hymns of the
Atris, and his sequences entitled respectively The
Secret of the Veda and Essays on the Gita, to show
that he was but one more link — one more arch —
in the chain or bridge that since the emergence of
Man from the forest has sought to stretch itself
across the turbid waters of the Ignorance and link
itself up with the Felicity that beckons to him from
the yonder shore.

Sri Aurobindo’ s admirably lucid commentary
on the Isha Upanishad has already run into several
editions ; in it he presents “the ideas of the Upa-
nishad in their completeness,’’ underlines the
suggestions, supplies the necessary transitions, and
thereby brings out “ the suppressed but always
implicit reasoning.’’^ In the Hymns of the Atris,
he keeps his eyes fixed throughout on his “ primary
object — ^to make the inner sense of the Veda seizable
by the cultured intelligence of today. ’’^ As he

1. Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad (1924 Edition), p. 13. Vide also
C. C. Dutt's article on " Sri Aurobindo and the Isha Upanishad " in the
Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 2943.

2, Arya, II, p. 50.

297

SRI AUROBINJUO

was himself living “ in a kindred world of spiritual
effort and aspiration ” when he plunged into the
Veda during his first years in Pondicherry, Sri
Aurobindo “ was able to enter into the heart of
the Vedic Rishis and their sacred mysteries.”^ The
Veda had been interpreted in the past, either as a
ritual system as per the commentaries of Sayana
and his successors, or as a naturalistic body of
knowledge by the paragons of European scholarship ;
granted that the Veda was a body of ritual as well
as a body of naturalistic knowledge, there was
behind them both “ the true and still hidden secret
of the Veda, — the secret words, ninya vachansi,
which were spoken for the purified in soul and the
awakened in knowledge.” The secret was ” still
hidden the letter had lived on ” when the spirit
was forgotten ; the symbol, the body of doctrine,
remained, but the soul of knowledge had fled from
its coverings.”^ Sri Aurobindo therefore boldly
addressed himself to this great task and strove to
show ‘‘the way of writing of the Vedic mysteries,
their systems of symbols and the truths they figure ;
and the result was one more enchanting sequence
from Sri Aurobindo’s pen. The articles in the
sequence are full of original and convincing inter-
pretations of the Vedic symbols, an example of

I. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1942, p, 175.
3. Arya, I, p. 348.

3. Ibid,, IV, p. 766.

2q8

IJtliL Lll'Jt DIVINi,

which is Sri Aurobindo’s identification of Sarama
with the “ Hound of Heaven

" Whether Sarama figures as the fair- footed
goddess speeding on the path or the heavenly
hound, mother of the wide-ranging guardians of
the path, the idea is the same, a power of the
Truth that seeks and discovers, that finds by a
divine faculty of insight the hidden Light and the
denied immortality.”^

The Riks thus yield their secrets one by one, till
at last we are made to feel that what was ” still
hidden” in 1914 is hidden now no more; Sri
Aurobindo has made us fully realize, by his con-
vincing and inspiring Interpretations, that the Riks
are really ” hymns to Light — to the Light that
leads man from mortality into immortality.”^

In his Essays on the Gita, again, Sri Aurobindo’s
aim was to seek and discover and exhibit “ the
deeper general truth which is sure to underlie
whatever seems at first sight merely local and of
the time.”^ Sri Aurobindo, unlike some of the
many dialecticians who have commented on it, is
interested in seizing the Gita’s living message
rather than in stretching it on the Procrustes’ Bed
of a particular system of philosophy. In words
that now and then cease to be merely words but

1. Arya, II, p. 563.

2. V. Chandrasekharam, Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1942, p. 209,

3. Essays on the Gita, I, p. 9.

2QQ

SRI AUROjilNDO

vibrate rather like a flotilla of the spirit, in words
that always invoke the desired and unique response,
Sri Aurobindo elaborates the ancient and perennial
and ever pertinent wisdom of the Gita, formulating
step by step “ the living message it still brings for
man the eternal seeker and discoverer to guide
him through the present circuits and the possible
steeper ascent of his life up to the luminous heights
of his spirit.”^

The Gita has been commented upon so
frequently, so voluminously, from so many view-
points, commented upon again so brilliantly and
so eloquently and so persuasively, that it is
astonishing that Sri Aurobindo should nevertheless
have succeeded in making his thousand-page
treatise not a whit superfluous, not a whit second-
hand or disagreeably obvious, but rather a radiant
re-evocation of the philosophia peremis embodied
in the Lord’s Song. With the Gita in one hand
(if, indeed, it is not already in one’s memory) and
the Essays in another, the reader’s eyes shift to
and fro, his imagination is powerfully roused, his
intellect is excitedly alive, and the Poem and the
Commentary are seen to cross and recross till at
last they fuse into a stream of revelation and flow
on for ever.

The Gita is a poem, it is the Song Celestial ; it
embodies a philosophy, the philosophia perennis for

I. Essays on the Gita, II, p. 466.

300

IHi. Lli'j::. DiVlNJi

the truth-seeking Aryan ; and it is, besides, a
Handbook of Yoga. Himself a poet, a philosopher
and a Yogin, Sri Aurobindo is admirably and
ideally qualified to unravel and expound the under-
lying truths of the Gita, its intricate poetic
symbolism, its play of piercing imagery, its hidden
layers of thought. Reading the Essays is itself often
an entrancing experience; the words repeatedly
kindle into imagery and the reader almost feels that
Kurukshetra is here, in a real and not only in a
metaphorical sense. In a passage like the following
where Sri Aurobindo wishes to suggest something
of the " mystical tremendum " that seized Arjuna
when he beheld the “ Vision of the World-Spirit,”
the words acquire a winged urgency and dynamism
that overwhelms the reader at once :

“ The supreme Form is then made visible.
It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are
everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of
existence, who multiplies unendingly all the
many marvellous revelations of his being, a
world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable
eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed
for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons,
glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed
in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands,
of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes.
Such is the light of this body of God as if a
thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The
whole world multitudinously divided and yet

SRi AUKOBINUO

unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods.
- Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful
and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested
in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild
and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and
sweet and terrible world, and overcome with
marvel and joy and fear he bows down and
adores with words of awe and with clasped hands
the tremendous vision.”^

Likewise, when Sri Aurobindo, in the last
chapter of the Second Series, attempts to ‘'sum-
marize the message of the Gita," he once more
rises to the occasion — as he has done so often in
the preceding nine hundred pages — and gives us a
sustained piece of illumined and persuasive eloqu-
ence. The integrality of the Gita’s philosophy and
Yoga is emphasized all the time, but nowhere so
fully and convincingly as in this concluding chapter ;
and the reader is led by slow gradations to the
culminating exhortation of all :

“ This then is the supreme movement, this
complete surrender of your whole self and
nature, this abandonment of all dharmas to the
Divine who is your highest Self, this absolute
aspiration of all your members to the supreme
spiritual nature. If you can once achieve it,
whether at the outset or much later on the way,
then whatever you are or were in your outward

I. Essays on the Ctta, 11 , pp. 176-7.

302

■ 1 H£- LlJfJi UIVlNE

nature, your way is sure and your perfection
inevitable. A supreme Presence within you will
take up your Yoga and carry it swiftly along
the lines of your svabhava to its consummate
completion. And afterwards whatever your way
of life and mode of action, you will be consciously
living, acting and moving in him and the Divine
Power will act through you in your every inner
and outer motion. This is the supreme way
because it is the highest secret and mystery. . . .
the deepest and most intimate truth of your real,
your spiritual existence.”^

VIII

In another important Arya sequence. The
Psychology of Social Development , — a modest affair
of twenty-four illuminating chapters, — Sri Auro-
bindo sketched in some detail the broad lines of
social development in a world progressively inspired
by the ideal of the Life Divine. What is man’s
duty to the community once he has solved his own
personal problems and attained self-realization ?
Should he not impart his wisdom and give the
inspiration of his example to his particular social
group, — guide it, energize it, divinize it ? At the
outset Sri Aurobindo lays down the “ law ” govem-

I. Essays on the Gita, II, pp. 500 - 1 . Vide also Anilbaran Roy’s article on
' Sri Aurobindo and the Gita” in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1943"

SRI AUKOBINDO

ing — at any rate, the law that ought to govern — ^the
progressive movements in a society or a community
or a nation :

" As the individual seeks his own self-develop-
ment and strives rightly to find himself, to
discover the law and power of his own being
within himself and to fulfil it, because he is even
after all qualifications have been made and
caveats entered, not merely the ephemeral creature
or a form of mind and body, but a being, a living
power of the eternal Truth, so also a society,
community, nation seeks its own self-fulfilment,
strives rightly to find itself, to become aware
within itself of the law and power of its own
being and to fulfil it as perfectly as possible,
to live its own life, to realize all its potentialities.
And for the same reason : because this too is a
being, a living power of the eternal Truth and is
intended to express and fulfil the truth and power
within it in its own way and to the degree of its
capacities.”^

Society is thus conceived as a being, capable of
aspirations, endeavours, achievements ; but it is
the individual in whom the urge to progress first
manifests itself ; " The Spirit discovers, develops,

builds into form in the individual man and through
the individual offers the discovery and the chance
of the new self- creation to the communal mind. ..

I. Arya, III, p. 226

304

li-iJti LltJi UIViNa

the communal mind holds things subconsciously at
first or, if consciously, then in a confused, chaotic
manner, and it is only through the individual mind
that it can arrive at a clear knowledge and creation
of the thing that it held in the subconscient self.”^
Such a leader of a forward movement in the life
of a society, community or nation is almost its
brain, its keeper of conscience, its inmost soul;
and the leader, the spiritual man, who is endowed
with the ability to guide human life towards the
realization of its ideals is “typified in the ancient
Indian idea of the Rishi, who living the life of man
has found the word of the supra-intellectual, supra-
mental, spiritual truth.”^ Like the sruti, the
musical norm that gives life to and harmonizes the
many clanging notes that traverse three octaves or
more with a dizzy rapidity, he too, he the man of
steady wisdom, can rise above mere human limita-
tions and “ guide the world humanly as God guides
it divinely, because like the Divine he is in the life
of the world and yet above it.”®

It must be remembered, however, that social
progress is not — not in its essence — a matter of
legislative enactments. The leader of a society
has to be a great soul who has plumbed the depths
and touched the topmost heights of the spirit,
and not merely a biologist or a sociologist, and not

1. Aryd, IV, p. 675.

2. Ibid., IV, p. 298.

3. Ibid., IV, p. 298.

305

SRI AUKOBINDO

certainly a “drain inspector’’ or a loud-mouthed
promulgator of particular panaceas :

"... .the individuals who will most help the
future of humanity in the new age will be those
who will recognize a spiritual evolution as the
destiny and therefore the great need of the human
being ; an evolution or conversion .... of the
present type of humanity into a spiritualized
humanity, even as the animal man has been
largely converted into a highly mentalized
humanity .... They (the spiritual leaders of the
society) will especially not make the mistake of
thinking that this change can be effected by
machinery and outward institutions ; they will
know and never forget that it has to be lived out
by each man Inwardly or it can never be made
a reality.’’^

Even so we must accept the fact, however
unpalatable it might be, that, if one swallow does
not make the summer, neither does the emei'gence
of one great soul, a Gnostic Being or a Mahatma
or a Rishi, in itself guarantee the immediate organ-
ization of a perfect society, community, nation;
it is an indication of direction, it is a promise dangled
before the eager eyes of the people ; but the people
too have to persevere in the path, and then only
could they redeem the promise and make it a
reality. If the number of these spiritual men, —

I. Arya, IV, pp. 739-40.

•^o6

■iHE DIVINE

these samurai in the service of the Divine, these
Mahatmas and Rishis, — is sufficiently large, “then
the Spirit who is here in man as the concealed
divinity, the developing light and power, will
descend more fully as the inner Godhead, the
avatar into the soul of mankind and into the great
individualities in whom the light and power are
the strongest, and there will be fulfilled the change
which will prepare the transition of human life
from its present limits into those larger and purer
horizons.''^

IX

If, then, individual man can transmit something
of his vision and his spirit-born strength to his
community and help it also in some measure to
realize its diviner potentialities, cannot this process
be extended still further until it embraces at last
humanity itself in its entirety ? This is the age-
long and still pertinent question that Sri Aurobindo
discusses with his usual clarity and vision in the
fifth of the famous sequences, a sequence of thirty-

1. Arya, IV, p. 741. The lateMahadev Govind Ranade also pinned
his faith on the spiritual leadership of the Rishis ; after enumerating some
Indian Rishis past and present, he concluded his speech on " Vasishta and
Visvamitra ’’ thus : " A race that can ensure a continuance of such leaders
can, in my opinion, never fail, and \iith the teachings of such men to
guide and instruct and inspire us, I, for one, am confident that the time
■will be hastened when we may be vouchsafed a sight of the Promised
Land.” (The words were quoted by the Rt, Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri
in the course of his lecture on " Rishi Ranade " on the occasion of the
Ranade Centenary).

70

307

SRI ATJKOBiNDO

five chapters entitled The Ideal of Human Unity.

Sri Aurobindo tackles the problem of human
unity both as a historian and as a social critic, both
as a practical statesman and as an architect of the
future. The problem seems at first more or less
an insoluble one. The individual wants freedom,
the fullest possible freedom, for without freedom
life would appear to lose most of its flavour ; but
the individual also wants security, he wants peace,
he wants order and harmony within and without.
How is he — how are we — to effect a balance between
these two poles of existence, Freedom for the
individual and Security for the aggregate ? The
balance must be effected, — else either the individual
will dwindle into an automaton or the aggregate
will split up into a million fragments, and so cease
to be :

“ The whole process of Nature depends on a
balancing and a constant tendency to harmony
between two poles of life, the individual whom
the whole or aggregate nourishes and the aggregate
which the individual helps to constitute.
Human life forms no exception to the rule.
Therefore the perfection of human life must
involve in itself the unaccomplished harmony
between these two poles of our existence, the
individual and the social aggregate. The perfect
society will be that which most entirely favours
the perfection of the individual.”^

1. Arya, II, p. 189.

308

iHE LIfE JJIVINE

Humanity has already made several attempts to
realize this balance between the two poles of our
existence,^ — but the harmony remains as yet un-
accomplished. Sri Aurobindo traces the stages in
the urge towards harmony — ^the failures and the
partial successes and the relapses — with a view to
erecting the future on a firm foundation both of
accurate historical knowledge and spiritual insight
into the true destiny of man. The ideal of human
unity has sought in the past to realize itself, fir-st, by
the development of a central authority, second, by-
bringing about a measure of uniformity in
administration, and third, by achieving to a greater
or lesser extent the transformation of that authority
from the autocrat or the governing class into that
of a body whose proposed function was to represent
the thought and will of the whole community, the
whole change representing in principle " the evolu-
tion from a natural and organic to a rational and
mechanically organized state of society.”^

But the working out of the ideal of human unity
has had an arrested, even of late a perverse, develop-
ment, and today® we witness the spectacle of a
generally peace-loving humanity plunged into a sea
of misery by the remorseless operations of a global
war. The Hague Court and the League of Nations
and the Kellogg Pact all have proved powerless to

I. Arya, III, p. 70a.

2 Written in October 1943.

SRI AUROBlNJJO

bring about the permanent outlawry of war. The
League and the Kellogg Pact failed because, among
other things, they lacked the backing of a powerful
international police or armed force. Sri Aurobindo
does not subscribe to the view that the application
of force is under all circumstances a sinful act ;

“ Diffused, force fulfils the free workings of
Nature and is the servant of life, but also of
discord and struggle ; concentrated, it becomes
the guarantee of organization and the bond of
order.” ^

This is a truth which should not be lost sight of
either by the uncompromising protagonists of ahimsa
or by the architects of ” New World Orders.”

In spite of the gloomy prospect that envelops
us all round, we must agree with Sri Aurobindo
when he says that the men and women of today are
progressively acquiring a cosmopolitan outlook, a
unifying sentiment, and coining to realize the exist-
ence of more and more common interests, "or at
least the interlacing and interrelation of interests in
a larger and yet larger circle which makes old
divisions an obstacle and a cause of weakness.”®
At the same time, we should not commit the mistake
of the " god-state ” gospellers and the totalitarian
tub-thumpers by identifying unity with dead uni-
formity. As Sri Aurobindo warns us :

1. Arya, IV, p. 6i.

2 . Ibid., rV, p. 744.

310

ittE Lli-E DIVINE

" Unity the race moves towards and must
one day realize. But uniformity is not the law
of life ; life exists by diversity ; it insists that
every group, every being shall be, even
while one with all the rest in its universality,
yet by some principle or ordered detail of varia-
tion unique.”^

Individuals, then, should seek unity, unity in the
Divine, not uniformity in the bleak land of collec-
tivism ;

‘ ‘ A spiritual oneness creating a psychological
oneness which would not depend upon intellectual
or other uniformity, and compelling a oneness
of life which would also not depend on its
mechanical means of unification, but would find
itself enriched by a free inner variation and a
freely varied outer self-expression, this would be
the basis for a higher type of human existence."^
In an article entitled “ The Passing of War,"
written during the second year of World War I,
Sri Aurobindo emphasized in equally strong terms
the necessity for building the future on durable
spiritual foundations. Our immediate need is the
outlawry of war ; humanity cries out from the
depths of its heart that it should be spared henceforth
these periodical world conflagrations and their
attendant incommensurable sufferings. With peace-

1. Ary a, IV, p 300.

2. ibid., IV, p 752.

HI

SRi AUKOBIMUO

assured, humanity could forge further still ahead
and start building the many- chambered mansion
of the Life Divine. But how shall we achieve the
permanent outlawry of war ? Sri Aurobindo gives
the answer, but it is for humanity to translate it
into practice :

“ Only when man has developed, not merely
a fellow-feeling with all men, but a dominant
sense of unity and commonalty, only when he is
aware of them not merely as brothers — that is a
fragile bond — but as parts of himself, only when
he has learned to live, not in his separate personal
and communal ego-sense, but in a larger universal
consciousness can the phenomenon of war, with
whatever weapons, pass out of his life for ever.”^
When war at last becomes a mere nightmare of the
past, peace will indeed reign in our midst,, and even
our dream of the Life Divine will then become an
actuality in the fullness of time. It is not, of course,
Sri Aurobindo’ s view that the evolution of the Life
Divine actually depends on the passing away of
war. His view may be said to be rather the opposite.
The present World War, for instance, is somewhat
in the nature of an opportunity to Man to forge
ahead. The war is not a fight between nations
and governments, still less between good peoples
and bad peoples, but

“ between two forces, the Divine and the

r. Arya, II, p. 576.

312

IHtL Llfii UIVXNt,

Asuric. What we have to see is on which side
men and nations put themselves ; if they put
themselves on the right side, they at once make
themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in
spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and
actions which are common to human nature and
all human collectivities. The victory of one side
(the Allies) would keep the path open for the
evolutionary forces ; the victory of the other side
would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly
and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual
failure as a race, as others in the past evolution
have failed and perished , , . . The Divine takes
men as they are and uses men as His instruments
even if they are not flawless in virtue, angelic,
holy and pure. If they are of good-will, if, to
use the Biblical phrase, they are on the Lord’s
side, that is enough for the work to be done.''^

j. Letter to a Disciple : quoted in The Advent, Vol. I, No. i, pp. 9-11.

.31.1

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

POET OF YOGA

I

We have seen in the concluding sections of the
preceding chapter how the divinization of man the
individual, — the emergence of the Gnostic Being, —
will inspire his immediate environment and also
accelerate the urge towards the realization of human
unity. But the new Man will also favourably and
vitally influence our conceptions of poetry and of
art in general and thereby facilitate the production
of genuine “ futurist " art and poetry. Here,
again, Sri Aurobindo’s contributions, as futurist
critic no less than as futurist poet, will form no mean
foundations on which the edifices of the future may
be safely and greatly reared.

The refreshingly stimulating and original series
of articles that Sri Aurobindo contributed to Arya
under the general caption, The Future Poetry, began
as a notice of Dr. Cousins's New Ways in English
Literature ; the review, however, was only a starting
point ; the rest was drawn from Sri Aurobindo’s
own ideas and his already conceived view of Art and
life ; and, ultimately, the “ review ” became a
treatise of thirty-two chapters, extending to about

POtl Ol- JfOCiA

three-hundred and fifty pages of the Arya. Literary
history, sesthetic criticism, appreciations of individual
English poets, classical and modern, speculations on
the future of poetry in general and of English poetry
in particular, discussions on recondite themes like
" Rhythm and Movement, ” “ Style and Substance,”
“ The Sun of Poetic Truth, ” ” The Soul of Poetic
Delight and Beauty, ” ” The Form and the Spirit, ”
etc., all these are seemingly recklessly thrown into
Sri Aurobindo’s critical and creative melting pot,
and the result is a most refreshingly and illumin-
atingly informative and prophetic work of literary
criticism.

The seer that he is, Sri Aurobindo glimpses the
very head and front, feels the pulse and the very
heart-beats, of the Future Poetry. Characteristi-
cally does he call his series of articles, not ” The
Future of Poetry, ” but simply as ” The Future
Poetry ” ; it is a thing as good as decreed — even as
the supramental descent is a thing decreed and
inevitable — that the future poetry should partake of
the nature of the mantra, “ that rhythmic speech
which, as the Veda puts it, rises at once from the
heart of the seer and from the distant home of the
Truth. Not that such poetry will be altogether

“new” : “Poetry in the past has done that in
moments of supreme elevation ; in the future there
seems to be some chance of its making it a more

I The Future Poetry, Introductory Chapter ; Arya, IV, p 318.

SRI AUROBINJUO

conscious aim and steadfast endeavour. '' ^

After laying down the important dictum that the
true creator, the true hearer of poetry is the soul,
Sri Aurobindo maintains that the poetic word
acquires its extraordinary intensity and evocative
power because “it comes from the stress of the
soul-vision behind the word.”^ Words in poetry
are not just words, words picked at random from a
dictionary ; words are nowadays printed or written,
and hence they catch the eye, but words were not
always printed or written ; words are spoken, and
they are heard by the human ear as they are spoken,
but words need neither be spoken by the human
mouth nor heard by the human ear. What, then,
is the true content of the poetical word ? It does
have a particular look on the printed page, it does
convey a particular sound to the ear, it does com-
municate something akin to an idea to the mind ;
but the word is more than what it looks and what it
■sounds and what it seems to mean ; it is a symbol,
it is a wave that floats in the ocean of Eternity,
■sometimes carrying a whisper from God to man or
a prayer from man to God. In logical phraseology
we might say that a word has both a deJiinitive
•denotation and an unknown, almost limitless con-
notation ; we might say that a word has both a
semantic import and a phonetic significance ; but we

1. The Future Poetry, Introductory Chapter ; Arya, IV, p. 318.

2. Ibid., Chapter on “ The Essence of Poetry.”

FOjl-T Oi.' YOGA

cannot ever hope altogether to dispossess words of
their potency, their mystery and their ineluctable
magic. Words that are apparently rugged and prosaic
when looked at within the covers of a dictionary or
in the columns of a newspaper are suddenly
kindled, at the poet’s magic touch, into a flame of
beauty that radiates “ thoughts that wander through
eternity.” The true poetic word, then, while it
too catches the attention of the eye and reverberates
in the ear, ever strives rather to provoke the inward
eye, to reach the inward ear, to sink into the deeper
soul ; it is akin rather to a blinding emanation of the
spirit that annihilates space and time and links the
human soul with infinity and eternity.

*' Vision, ” says Sri Aurobindo, " is the charac-
teristic power of the poet, as is discriminative
thought the essential gift of the philosopher and
analytic observation the natural genius of the
scientist. The Kavi was in the idea of the ancients
the seer and revealer of truth .... Therefore the
greatest poets have been always those who have had
a large and powerful interpretative and intuitive
vision of Nature and life and man and whose poetry
has arisen out of that in a supreme revelatory
utterance of it. A poet, whatever else he may or
may not possess, should be endowed with “ sight ” — •
with an eye that can roll in a fine frenzy, glancing
from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven — and

I. The Future Poetry, Chapter on “ Poetic Vision and the Mantra.

.'^17

SRI AUKOiJlNUO

with “ voice ” — with a tongue that renders the
truths he has seen in terms of vivid imagery and
compelling beauty. The thought-content and the
rhythmic organization of a piece, however merito-
rious in themselves, will not make it a poem so long
as they are not properly wedded to a corresponding
intensity of vision. ‘‘ And, ” adds Sri Aurobindo,
" this does not depend only on the individual power
of vision of the poet, but on the mind of his age and
his country, its level of thought and experience, the
adequacy of its symbols, the depth of its spiritual
attainment. ” ^ A poet, even a very great poet, is a
product of his own age ; he is implicated in its
limitations and its possibilities. In like manner, he
is also a representative of his race, of his nation, of his
people ; he derives largely from them, he cannot
quite get away from them : " The soul of the poet

may be like a star and dwell apart ; even, his work
may seem not merely a variation from but a revolt
against the limitations of the national mind. But
still the roots of his personality are there in its
spirit and even his variation and revolt are an attempt
to bring out something that is latent and suppressed
or at least something which is trying to surge up
from the secret all-soul into the soul-form of the
nation.

Sri Aurobindo devotes the next few chapters to

1. The Future Poetry, Chapter on " Poetic Vision and the Mantra.

2. Ibtd., Chapter on " The National Evolution of Poetry.”

FUJiT Of iTOGA

a survey of English poetry from Anglo-Saxon to
our own times. He is not giving us an academic
history of English poetry after the manner of
Courthope or Oliver Elton or even Earle Welby ; Sri
Aurobindo’s is a personal, a temperamental survey,
and is therefore, not only more fresh and more
interesting than the academic histories, but is also,
as sheer interpretative criticism, more valuable at
the same time. Everywhere one comes across the
same passion for seizing the essential truth, the
same intuition into the uttermost essence of poetry,
the same unfailing sense for detecting subtle sound
values and delicate movements in rhythm, and,
above all, the same wonderful mastery of language
that weaves derogation and appreciation, criticism
and prophecy, illustration and generalization into a
truly wonderful and mighty fabric of elaborate and
enchanting prose.

Sri Aurobindo begins his account of English
poetry by subscribing to the general opinion that
of all the modern European tongues the English
language “has produced the most rich and naturally
powerful poetry, the most lavish of energy and
innate genius.’’^ After two chapters on the " char-
acter ’’ of English poetry — chapters that reveal
both scholarship and insight and lay bare both the
great qualities and the still thwarted purposes of
English poetry — ^Sri Aurobindo starts assessing,

I. The Future Poetry, Chapter on " The Character of English Poetry."

SRI AaRUBlWJJO

with the same self-confidence and suggestion of
authority, the work of the great or well-known
English poets. Most of these assessments are
couched in a language that, for all its rhythmical
sweeps and imaginative fervour, is crystalline in
purity and beauty. We have no space here to
refer to Sri Aurobindo’s many individual estimates :
but we give below one or two significant extracts
to convey a fair idea of the manner in which
Sri Aurobindo discharges his function as a true
appraiser of poetry :

“ Chaucer has his eye fixed on the object,
and that object is the external action of life as it
passes before him throwing its figures on his
mind and stirring it to a kindly satisfaction in the
movement and its interest, to a blithe sense of
humour or a light and easy pathos. He does not
seek to add anything to it or to see anything
below it or behind its outsides, nor does he look
at all into the souls or deeply into the minds of
the men and women whose appearance, action
and easily apparent traits of character he describes
with so apt and observant a fidelity .... But
neither his poetic speech nor his rhythm has
anything of the plastic greatness and high beauty
of the Italians. It is an easy, limpid and flowing
movement, a stream rather than a well, — for it
has no depths in it, — of pure English utterance
just fitted for the clear and pleasing poetic present-
ation of external life as if in an unsullied mirror,

FUJtil Oi-’ YOGA

at times rising into an apt and pointed expression^
but for the most part satisfied with a first primitive
power of poetic speech, a subdued and well-
tempered and even adequacy. Only once or
twice does he by accident strike out a really
memorable line of poetry ; yet Dante and Petrarch
were among his masters.”^

“ Byron, no artist, intellectually shallow and
hurried, a poet by compulsion of personality
rather than in the native colour of his mind,
inferior in all these respects to the finer strain of
his great contemporaries, but in compensation a
more powerful elemental force than any of them
and more in touch with all that had begun to
stir in the mind of the times, — always an advant-
age, if he knows how to make use of it, for a
poet’s largeness,- — and ease of execution, succeeds
more amply on the inferior levels of his genius,
but fails in giving any adequate voice to his
highest possibility. Wordsworth, meditative, in-
ward, concentrated in his thought, is more often
able by force of brooding to bring out that voice
of his greater self, but flags constantly, brings in
a heavier music surrounding his few great clear
tones, drowns his genius at last in a desolate sea
of platitude. Neither arrives at that amplitude
of achievement which might have been theirs
in a more fortunate time, if ready forms had been

I. The Future Poei7;y, Chapter on " The Course of English Poetry.”

321

SRJL AUKOBlNDO

given to them, or if they had lived in the stimu-
lating atmosphere of a contemporary culture
harmonious with their personality.”^

Mark the subtle variations, the suggestive quali-
fications, the many parentheses on the way ; mark
too how in such appraisements comparative criticism
acquires a poetical fervour and finality ; and The
Future Poetry is full of such beautiful and memorable
and essentially accurate appraisements !

Likewise in the four chapters on ” Recent
English Poetry,” Sri Aurobindo attempts — and this
is a much more difficult and risky thing than the
appraisement of the poets of yesterday or -the day
before ! — a personal, unambiguous and clear-voiced
appraisement of “recent” poets like Whitman,
Carpenter, Tagore, A. E., Phillips, and W. B.
Yeats. Whitman is not unnaturally given the largest
amount of space and Sri Aurobindo interprets his
poetry and his art with great vividness. One of the
most luminous passages in the whole book is the
one in which Sri Aurobindo elaborates an unex-
pected, but very convincing, comparison between
Homer and Whitman :

“ Whitman’s aim is consciously, clearly, pro-
fessedly to make a great revolution in the whole
method of poetry, and if anybody could have
succeeded, it ought to have been this giant of
poetic thought with his energy of diction, this

I. The Future Poetry, Chapter on " The Poets of the Dawn.”

322

Jr’OjL. r Ol' YUliA

spiritual crowned athlete and vital prophet of
democracy, liberty and the soul of man and
Nature and all humanity. He is a great poet,
one of the greatest in the power of his substance,
the energy of his vision, the force of his style,
the largeness at once of his personality and his
universality. His is the most Homeric voice
since Homer, in spite of the modern’s less elevated
ffisthesis of speech and the difference between
that limited Olympian and this broad-souled
Titan, in this that he has the nearness to some-
thing elemental which makes everything he
says, even the most common and prosaic, sound
out with a ring of greatness, gives a force even
to his barest or heaviest phrases, throws even
upon the coarsest, dullest, most physical things
something of the divinity ; and he has the elemental
Homeric power of sufficient straightforward
speech, the rush too of oceanic sound though it is
here the surging of the Atlantic between the
continents, not the magic roll and wash of the
jEgean around the isles of Greece. What he
has not, is the unfailing poetic beauty and nobility
which saves greatness from its defects — ^that
supreme gift of Homer and Valmiki — and the
self-restraint and obedience to a divine law which
makes even the gods more divine.”^

Since these articles were written during the last

I. The Future Poetry, Chapter on Recent English Poetry."

OKI AUKOBINJJO

war, Sri Aurobindo had no opportunity of com-
menting on the work of Hopkins, Eliot, Auden, the
later Yeats, D. H. Lawrence and the rest of the
“ moderns.” But even with all the limitations —
he had, for instance, to judge ” recent ” poetry
mainly on the basis of the quotations in Mr.
Cousins’s book — he laboured under, Sri Aurobindo
has given us in the four or five chapters devoted
to “ Recent English Poetry ” an intensely personal
and hence very helpful account of some of the
major currents in the poetry of the “ recent past.”

Having thus admirably and illuminatingly
surveyed the ” course ” of English poetry from the
Anglo-Saxons and Chaucer to Whitman and Yeats,
Sri Aurobindo discusses the possibilities of the
future. He believes that the day is not so far off
as we imagine when the rending of the veil that
obscures the vision of present Mind will be ac-
complished at last and the new poet will hymn his
songs in the voice of the inmost spirit and truth
of things ; when he will achieve the beginningless,
eternal, ineffable rhythms of the spirit, — ^poetic
recordations charged with the triune glories of the
Beautiful, the Good and the True, but wholly
free from the blemish of personality or mortality.
The intellectual idea of man's unity with man and
man’s intimate relation with Nature, psychic res-
ponses and experiences on the basis of this intellec-
tual idea, and a language elastic and powerful
enough for the expression of the idea and the

responses and the experiences, — ^these things some
of the “ recent ” poets have given us indeed ; but
" the pouring of a new and greater self- vision of
man and Nature and existence into the idea and the
life is the condition of the completeness of the
coming poetry.”^ The idea and the response and
the experience are very creditable things in them-
selves ; but they have yet to pass into a complete
spiritual realization, they have yet to imprint
themselves indelibly in the deeper consciousness of
the race, they have still to acquire a natural and
general cunrency in human thought and feeling.

This is the vision, this the experience, this the
realization ; these alone can effect in their conjunc-
tion the inauguration of a great forward movement
in the history of poetry. The genuine " futurist "
poet — for instance, the Sri Aurobindo of Thought
the Paraclete and Rose of God and other recent
poems — may give a sense of direction and suggestion
of achievement to the new movement ; but “ the
Future Poetry ” will not prevail on a large or
effective scale in our midst so long as humanity
does not succeed in energizing its consciousness on a
more comprehensive and universal basis than
obtains now. But we need not despair ; the signs
are not unpropitious ; and the Promised Land
itself may be sighted in the far horizons of even
our limited consciousness :

I. The Future Poetry, " Conclusion."

bKi AUK01.INJJ0

“ It is in effect a larger cosmic vision, a realiz-
ing of the godhead in the world and in man, of
his divine possibilities as well as of the greatness
of the power that manifests in what he is, a
spiritualized uplifting of his thought and feeling
and sense and action, a more developed psychic
mind and heart, a truer and deeper insight into
his nature and the meaning of the world, a calling
of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values
into the intention and structure of his life that
is to call upon humanity, the prospect offered to
it by the slowly unfolding and now more clearly
disclosed Self of the universe. The nations
that most include and make real these things in
their life and culture are the nations of the
coming dawn and the poets of whatever tongue
and race who most completely see with this vision
and speak with the inspiration of its utterance are
those who shall be the creators of the poetry of
the future.”^

II

Sri Aurobindo has been writing poetry during
the past three decades of his retired life in Pondi-
cherry, just as he was writing poetry both in the
early Baroda period and in the few active years of
political life ; apart from the manuscripts unfor-
tunately lost consequent on the "house-searches,

I. The Future Poetry, “ Conclusion. ”

326

POE'X Ok YOGA

trials, hasty displacements and other vicissitudes of
those years of political action,” the rest of Sri
Aurobindo’s pre-Pondicherry poetical works (at
any rate, most of them) have been included in the
Collected Poems and Plays, published in 1943. It
appears ” there is a great mass of poems written
in the twenties and thirties and after but,
excepting for Six Poems and Transformation and
other poems and the sixteen pieces included in the
essay on Quantitative Metre as illustrative extracts,
this great treasure-house of “futurist” and other
poetry remains as yet a sealed thing to us. It is
said Sri Aurobindo is completing an epic entitled,
Savitri : a Legend and a Symbol ; and he has also
written several scores of sonnets and lyrics, and
many other poetic wholes and many more poetic
fragments. We have thus merely a fraction of
his recent poetical output to base a judgement
upon ; but that is significant and inspiring enough
and constitutes in itself a solid and unique achieve-
ment.

The section entitled “ Nine Poems ” m the
second volume of the collected edition consists of
pieces that occupy a roughly middle place in the
evolution of Sri Aurboindo’s poetic art. The Mother
of Dreams, to which we have drawn the reader's
attention in an earlier chapter, was composed in
the Alipur jail, but its rhythms and images already

I, Collected Poems and Plc^s, I, Publisher’s Note.
32‘7

SRI AIIKOJBINOO

foreshadow the great achievements of the Pondi-
cherry period. The Birth of Sin, The Rakshasas,
Kama and The Mahatmas : Kuthumi, all belong
in spirit and execution to the earlier rather than the
later period. Although these poems have adequate
thought-content, they are to be read and enjoyed
rather as the expressions of particular move-
ments of thought or plays of fancy. The language
now acquires a far greater degree of pregnancy and
suggestion of inevitability than is achieved in some
of the poems of the Baroda period.

In The Birth of Sin, Sirioth and Lucifer discuss
the causes of their undivine discontent (or is it
also divine ?) ; Lucifer desires Power, he would
like to enjoy an eternity of rule ; Sirioth, on the
contrary, wants Love :

To embrace, to melt and mix
Two beings into one, to roll the spirit
Tumbling into a surge of common joy.^

And when Power and Love meet in a wild and mad
embrace, *

Sin, sin is born into the world, revolt
And change, in Sirioth and in Lucifer,

The evening and the morning star.^

Like Browning’s Caliban upon Setehos, Sri Auro-
bindo’s poem, The Rakshasas, is a poetic rendering

1. Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. 126.
a. Ibid., II, p. 127.

328

i'Ox.r On YOLfA

of a partial or imperfect theology. If Caliban
constructs Setebos in his own image —

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos !

' Thinketh, He dwelleth i ’ the cold of the moon.

‘ Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,

But not the stars ; the stars came otherwise —

SO does Ravan, the Lord of Lanka :

O Rakshasa Almighty, look on me,

Ravan, the lord of all Thy Rakshasas,

Give me Thy high command to smite Thy foes ;

But most I would afflict, chase and destroy
Thy devotees who traduce Thee, making Thee
A God of Love.^

Thus “ each such type and level of consciousness
sees the Divine in its own image and its level in
Nature is sustained by a differing form of the World-
Mother.”^ Kama is a fine poetical rendering of
another idea — the great truth that by passing
beyond Desire and Ignorance one returns to the
Bliss of Brahman ; by losing all, one could save
all:

They who abandon Me, shall to all time
Clasp and possess ; they who pursue, shall lose.®

But by far the most amazing and the most
wonderfully evocative of the ” Nine Poems ” is
Ahana — a long poem of rhymed hexameters. First

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 133.

2. Ibid., II, p. 132.

3. Ibid., II, p. 136.

329

bKi AUKOiilJNOU

published in 1915, but perhaps written much
earlier, Ahana has since been considerably enlarged
and revised ; it can therefore be looked upon as
something of a palimpsest, a convenient bridge
between the two great phases of Sri Aurobindo’s
poetical career. Ahana is the " Dawn of God ” and
her advent is the occasion for universal rejoicings ;
the “ Hunters of Joy ” now sing a “ Song of Honour ”
replete with innumerable evocations of sound and
colour and inwrought with felicities of dhwani that
strangely echo in one’s ears for ever. Perhaps, the
poem is just a little too long ; the inspiration now
and then flags a little and poetry gives place to
padding, — but this is, after all, inevitable in a long
poem. And yet which modern poet has given us
lines more nobly articulate than these :

Deep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher ;
Powers of his godhead we live ; the Creator dwells in the

creature.

Out of his Void we arise to a mighty and shining existence,
Out of Inconscience, tearing the black Mask’s giant

resistance ;

Waves of his consciousness well from him into these bodies :

in Nature,

Forms are put round him ; his oneness, divided by mind’s

nomenclature,

Fligh on the summits of being ponders immobile and single.
Penetrates atom and cell as the tide drendres sand-grain and

'' shingle.

Oneness unknown to us dwells in these millions of figures

and faces.

a.io

jeOi-T Oi YOGA

Wars with itself in our battles, loves in our clinging

embraces,

Inly the self and the substance of things and their cause and

their mover

Veiled in the depths which the foam of our thoughts and

our life’s billows cover,
Heaves like the sea in its waves ; like heaven with its starfires

it gazes

Watching the world and its works ^

Form of the formless All-Beautiful, lodestar of Nature’s

aspirance,

Music of prelude giving a voice to the ineffable Silence,

First wlrite dawn of the God-Light cast on these creatures

that perish,

Word-key of a divine and eternal truth for mortals to

cherish.

Come 1 let thy sweetness and force be a breath in the

breast of the future

Making the god-ways alive, immortality’s golden-red suture :
Deep in our lives there shall work out a honeyed celestial

leaven,

Bliss shall grow native to being and earth be a kin-soil to

heaven.

Open the barriers of Time, the world with thy beauty

enamour ....

Vision delightful alone on the peaks whom the silences cover.
Vision of bliss, stoop down to mortality, lean to thy lover.®

Science and philosophy, thought and magic, intros-
pection and interrogation, fact and myth and
symbolism, hope and aspiration and ecstasy, all

1. Collected Poem and Plays, II, pp. iso-i.

2. Ibid., II, p. 162.

SKI AUROjJINJJO

course through Ahanas universe of melody with a
dizzy velocity — but the result is poetry. The
dactyls and the spondees and the closing trochees
give this torrential poem a Niagara-like strength
and headlong rapidity of motion. Now and then,
and anon and again, the resounding cataract crystal-
lizes into pearl- like images and captivating evoca-
tions :

Brooded out drama and epic, structured the climb of the

sonnet . . . . ^

Bliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and

death-blast and storm-race.

All is wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle . . . . ^
Memories linger, lines from the past like a half-faded

tracing ®

Fearless is there life’s play ; I shall sport with my dove from

his highlands,

Drinking her laughter of bliss like a God in my Grecian

islands.

Life in my limbs shall grow deathless, flesh with the

God-glory tingle.

Lustre of Paradise, light of the earth- ways marry and mingle.^

Studded with such iridescent lightnings, Ahana is
one long thunder and fascination of music, irresist-
ible, life-giving, and overpowering.

Although the hexameter is normally rhymeless,

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 14

2. Ibid; n, p. 152.

3. Ibid; II, p. 154.

4. Ibid., II, p. 160-1.

3:^2

i'OKl Ot' lUGA

Ahana throughout rhymes and chimes to perfection.
The history of English poetry is strewn with un-
successful attempts to acclimatize the sensitive and
subtly individual rhythms of the hexameter to the
ruggeder climate of English verse. Tennyson has
described English hexameters in this derisive
parody ;

When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England ?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon ?
Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,
Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters.

But it is highly doubtful if Tennyson would have
stood by this generalization if he had had a chance
of reading Ahana or Dawn over Ilion. In these two
magnificently articulate poems, Sri Aurobindo has
put into practice his own “ sound and reali.stic
theory” of true quantity. At first one's tongue
makes a slip, one is taken aback, one wonders if
all is as it should be ; one perseveres again, and
perhaps a third time, — and now one's tongue
knows the pace, one's ear pleasurably responds to
the seductive hexameters, and one knows that Sri
Aurobindo has really ” done the deed.” Here are
the opening lines of Ahana, scanned as English
hexameters :

Vision de|hghtful allone on the | hills whom the | silences j

cover.

Closer yet | lean to morjtality ; | human, | stoop to thy | lover.

AUKOxilJMJJO

Wonderful, | gold like a | moon in the | square of the | sun

where thou | strayest

Glimmers thy ] face amid j crystal ( purities ; j mighty thou |

playest

Sole on the | peaks of the | world, una|fraid of thy |

loneliness. | Glances

Leap from thee ] down to us, | dream-seas and | light-falls

and I magical | trances ;

Sun-drops | flake from thy [ eyes and the | heart’s caverns |

packed are with ] pleasure

Strange like a | song without | words or the | dance of a |

measureless | measure.^

It will be noticed that cretic, molossus and anti-
bacchius are used as modulations or substitutes for
the dactyl,

In Dawn over Ilion,^ Sri Aurobindo produces
the effect of magic and melody even without the
aid of rhymes ; apparently, what he does not know
and what he has not done in the matter of variation
is not worth knowing or worth doing ; but, as he
reminds us, “ all these minutiae are part of the
technique and the possibilities of the hexameter.”®
It is, however, beyond the scope of the present

1 . Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 141.

2. JbtU, II, pp. 375-385-

3. Ibid,, 11 , p. 358.

334

Jr’UJlA OJb '5^UtiA

study to go into greater detail regarding Sri
Aurobindo’s theory and practice of quantitative
verse technique.^

Ill

Six Poems, Transformation and other Poems and
the sixteen pieces that are printed at the end of
Collected Poems and Plays alone now remain to be
considered. These recent poems are an attempt,
not only to adapt classical quantitative metres to
English verse, but also to achieve in English some-
thing equivalent to the mantra. Mystical experi-
ence, being by its very nature untranslatable in
terms of logical categories, has perforce to borrow
significance from the use of words and rhythms as
symbols of, and as intimations from, something
above and beyond themselves and at the same time
as something springing up from the mystic’s Inmost
psychic depths, deeper than ever plummet sounded.
The great mystic poets of the world are thus
inveterately “ obscure,” trafficking in symbols that
perplex all except the initiated or chosen few who
are able or willing to catch the lucent rays that
emanate from the supernal Light. Such poetry
has but rarely been achieved in the past — especially
in English. It is, however, Sri Aurobindo’s con-
sidered view, as we have explained already in the

I. An attempt has been made in. the Appendix to study in detail Sri
Aurobindo’s handling of the hendecasyllabics in his Thought the Paraclete.

AUKOuiNJJO

first section, that the future poetry — ^even or es-
pecially in English — wiil more and more approx-
imate to the mantra ; it will minimize if not altogether
eliminate the operations of meddling middlemen —
the intellect, the senses, even the imagination — and
it will effect in one swift unfailing step the business
of communication from the poet to the reader.
As Sri Aurobindo has beautifully put it :

‘ ‘ A divine Ananda, a delight interpretative,
creative, revealing, formative, — one might almost
say, an inverse reflection of the joy which the
universal Soul has felt in its great release of
energy when it rang out into the rhythmic
forms of the universe the spiritual truth, the
large interpretative idea, the life, the power, the
emotion of things packed into its original creative
vision, — such spiritual joy is that which the soul
of the poet feels and which, when he can conquer
the human difficulties of his task, he succeeds in
pouring also into all those who are prepared to
receive it.”^

Sri Aurobindo would seem to have almost succeeded
in conquering “ the human difficulties of his task ”
and the " futurist ” poems that he has given us —
albeit they are but a mere fraction of his actual
output — constitute the culmination of his long and
arduous poetic career.

Nevertheless, these recent poems have puzzled

1. The Future Poetry, CSiapter on " The Essence of Poeti-y.‘

336

±'Oi.l OF ^OGA

most readers, not only on account of their " obs-
curity," but also because they either handle classical
metres to which we are not ordinarily accustomed
or they are couched in rhythms that seem at first
to sway uncertainly and confusingly between the
rigid patterns of classical English prosody and the
chaotic vagaries of modernist free verse. It will,
however, be a vulgar mistake if a reader, after looking
into either the essay on “ Quantitative Metre ’’ or
the notes to Six Poems, rashly concluded that these
poems are no more than a prosodist's experiments
in quantity. It is true Sri Aurobindo has given a
great deal of attention to the technical perfection
of his poems ; but this need not trouble us, for as
he once wrote to a disciple :

" The search for technique is simply the
search for the best and most appropriate form
for expressing what has to be said and once it is
found the inspiration can flow quite naturally
and fluently into it. There can be no harm
therefore in attention to technique so long as
there is no inattention to substance."

When the substance (which, of course, includes
hhava) is adequate and when technique leads to art
rather than degenerates into trickery, we have a
true poem and not an idle experiment in verse ;
and Sri Aurobindo's " recent ” poems are without
the shadow of a doubt, alike in their substance and
articulation, truly quintessential poetry.

As for "obscurity,” it is apparently there, but

3^7

Ski AuKOBiisuo

it is unavoidably there. Poetry is always the
expression of a mood or a movement of thought or
a unit of experience in an outer objective or an
inner subjective or spiritual world. We can con-
demn a poet if he makes— as do some of our ultra-
modernists — obscurity or unintelligibility the ruling
principle of his poetry. But, as Mr. Aldous Huxley
reminds us, “ obscurity in poetry is by no means
always to be avoided. Shakespeare, for example,
is one of the most difficult authors. He often
writes obscurely, for the good reason that he often
has subtle and uncommon thoughts to put into
words. Who has yet completely understood the
"To be or not to be " speech in Hamlet ? And a
poet has the same right to coin his unique spiritual
adventures into imperishable poetry even as he has
the right to turn deftly his emotional responses into
an elegy or a song or an ode. All that we can
legitimately demand from the poet is that he should
be as lucid as his particular subject will permit
him to be. The point has been neatly clarified in
a recent article in the Times Literary Supplement :

“ As writing is designed to be read, it is
evidently a merit in it to enable, rather than to
impede, the reader’s understanding, but it is
true also that lucidity is not an absolute but
a relative virtue — relative to the reader’s sympathy
and to the complexity and remoteness from
ordinary experience of the thought or vision to

I. Texts and Pretexts, p. 220.

PO£.r Oje YOGA

be communicated. If we find Scott’s verse more
lucid than, say, Blake’s, we are by no means
entitled to reproach Blake with failure in lucidity.
The question is : is he as lucid as possible under
the circumstances ? . . . . The man who is willingly
obscure is a charlatan ; the man who is obscure,
though his matter be small, is an incompetent ;
but let us not pass judgement hastily. A new
secret may demand a new idiom, and we must
have ears to hear it.”^

And the mystic has a “ secret ” to impart and
he is often compelled to invent his own idiom and
even his own rhythms. Spiritual experiences being
per se ineffable are for that very reason incom-
municable through the medium of our everyday
vocabulary. And yet such experiences are dear
to the heart of man, and he would gladly clutch
at the intangible and capture and retain it (if he
could !) as a part of himself. That is why we
cherish in our heart’s tabernacle revelations like
Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven or Sri
Aurobindo’s Rose of God and Thought the Paraclete.
We love them, we cherish them, we tap them
from time to time to draw forth momentary solace,
— but do we understand them in every particular,
do we gauge the plenty in every crevice or sense
the significance of every turn of thought and every
shade of colour ? We do attempt to reproduce

I- July 3- IMS-
339

SRI AUROBINOO

intellectually the poet’s spiritual experience, but
the images that we construct in our minds will be
but a lifeless facade, a grandiose proxy bloated with
mere mental stuff ; the experience as such is un-
fortunately denied to most of us, and hence we blink
pathetically in our bewilderment when the poet
describes the thrills he has braved, the splendours
he has glimpsed, the vast beatitudes he has been.

Our doubts and difficulties and bewilderments
will, however, tend to disappear if we approach the
poems without preconceived notions of what poetry
and metre should or should not be ; in other words,
if we read the poems to ourselves, slowly and deli-
berately, keeping our physical no less than our
inward ear open, and sheathing for the nonce our
intellect’s razor-edge. If one reads thus a poem
like The Bird of Fire —

Gold-white wings a throb in the vastness, the bird of flame

went

glimmering over a sunfire curve to the haze of the west,
Skimming, a messenger sail, the sapphire-summer waste

of a soundless wayless burning sea.
Now in the eve of the waning world the colour and

splendour returning

drift through a blue-flicker air back to my breast,

Flame and shimmer staining the rapture-white foam-vest

of the waters of Eternity^ —

one will learn to discover in its unmanageably long

I. Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. 279.

340

Jt-Ox^V Or YOOA

lines and their abundant load of polysyllables and
unusual word-combinations an approximation to
the primordial music

Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn outd

One can then read the other poems, feel a
quickening of one’s pulses, share with Sri Aurobindo
the “ vision splendid,” re-live his experiences (even
in our limited mental worlds), and learn to repeat
to the darkness and the stars potent mantras such

My mind is awake in a stirless trance.

Hushed my heart, a burden of delight ;

Dispelled is the senses’ flicker-dance,

Mute the body aureate with light ^

A Bliss surrounds with ecstasy everlasting.

An absolute high-seated immortal rapture
Possesses, sealing love to oneness

In the grasp of the All-beautiful, All-beloved,

My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,

My body is God’s happy living tool.

My spirit a vast sun of deathless light. ... *

Earth is now girdled with trance and Heaven is put round

her for vesture.

Wings that are brilliant with fate sleep at Eternity’s gate.

1. Milton, L’ Allegro.

2. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 280,

3. Ibid., 11 , p. 28s.

4. Ibid., II, p. 297.

341

SRI ADKOBINJJO

Time waits, vacant, the Lightning that kindles, the Word

that transfigures ;

Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode, .d

I saw the spirit of the cosmic Ignorance ;

I felt its power besiege my gloried fields of trance . . ^

These lines, and indeed the poems in which
they occur, are the sheer distillations of poetry ;
they all aspire (to quote M. Abbe Bremond, though
written in a very different connection and, perhaps,
in a different sense as well), " each by the mediation
of its proper magic, words, notes, colours, lines —
they all aspire to joint prayer.’ It were sacrilege
to analyze the literary art that has evolved, after a
lifetime of arduous metrical as well as spiritual
discipline, such splendorous poetic creations.^ One
can attempt to scan the lines, enumerate the alliter-
ative devices, explain an image here and a metaphor
there, cite parallel quotations from The Life Divine
and other works, elucidate (if one can) the colour
symbolism and sound-associations, — but one is not
any nearer solving the eternal riddle that all great
poetry is or any nearer reducing Sri Aurobindo’s
recent poetry into negotiable systems and formul®.
Lines like " a quiver and colour of crimson flame ”

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 363.

2, From an unpublished poem.

3. Quoted by Garrod in his The Profession of Poetry, p. 39.

4, Nevertheless, an attempt has been made in the Appendix to study
the metre, form and thought-content of Thought the Paraclete in consi-
derable detail. In the same manner Sri Aurobindo’s other “ recent "
poems also may be “ elucidated.”

342

POi.T OF YOGA

or "in that diamond heart the fires undrape or
" the Eternal is broken into fleeting lives or

" Time is my drama or my pageant dream or

" a dance of fire-flies in the fretted gloom or
" and the gold god and the dream boat come not
or ‘ ‘and a huddle of melancholy hills in the distance’ ’ ®
— such lines are just miracles, miracles like the birth
of the sun or the blossoming of spring or the sweet-
ness of honey ; they are there, they are ours, and
let’s bind them to our souls with " hoops of steel ’’ !

Poetry, said M. Bremond, is characteristically a
mystic incantation, allied to joint prayer ; one has
just this feeling when one is listening to, or parti-
cipating in, a recitation or chanting of the Purusha
Sukta or a hymn from the Sama Veda. Likewise
when one reads Sri Aurobindo’s Rose of God — as
perfect a " Hymn ” in the English mould as could
be imagined — one knows that here rhythm and
phrase and music have coalesced into an utter
harmony ; and even as one slowly reads it — ^for the
tenth or for the hundredth time— one feels
The melting voice through mazes running ;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.’’

1. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 281,

2. Ibid., 11 , p. 2S4,

3. Ibid., II, p. 297.

4. Ibtd.,.II, p 299.

5. Ibtd , II, p. 366.

6. Ibid., II, p. 371.

7. Milton, L’ Allegro.

SRi AUROBINDO

And so one's enraptured ear demands that the
strains be repeated again and again ; and one is
content to chant the poem as often as one likes and
let its music and its meaning sink deep into one’s
soul’s recesses, there to abide for ever ;

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,
Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies

seven !

Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,
Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being.
Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing !

Live in the mind of our earthhood ; O golden Mystery,

flower,

Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous

Hour,

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might.
Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night !
Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy

plan.

Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine

Desire,

Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour’s lyre !

Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical

rhyme ;

Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the

children of Time.

Rose of God like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face,

Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace E

FOKT Ojj YUt^A

Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s

abyss :

Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude's

kiss.^

1. Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. 302.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE YOGA AND THE ASRAM
I

If Sri Aurobindo and his two collaborators had
planned as it were to storm humanity into accepting
the gospel of the Life Divine following the lead of
the Arya, they were doomed indeed to disappoint-
ment ; the circulation of the Arya had, owing to the
exigencies of the War, been more or less necessarily
limited to India ; and even in India, how many were
really willing to impose on themselves the continuous
intellectual strain that Sri Aurobindo demanded
from them ? No doubt, the magazine was received
and preserved with great reverence by a “fit
audience though few ” ; young men in colleges
wished earnestly to understand Sri Aurobindo’ s
message and try to live it ; and even those who were
not quite as enthusiastic as these young men knew
that Arya was trying to deliver a new message to
the world, a message that will create a genuine
“ Brave New World ” in our midst. In any case,
when the Arya ceased publication, Sri Aurobindo
must have begun considering the whole question
afresh with a view to discovering, if possible, other
ways of educating humanity and exhorting it to rise

.346

MHt /OGA ANJJ IHJJ- ASKAM

to the height of its great future in a perfected and
divinized world.

Meanwhile the War had come to an end and,
after an interregnum of a couple of years when men
and women merely resigned themselves to a mood
of tired or unbalanced relaxation, the world strove
to return again to “normalcy,” and humanity
appeared to be not unwilling to discuss the " eter-
nal ” questions. In externals, the world still seemed
a pitiful prey to conflicting and chaotic interests ;
men and women, especially those who seemed
doomed to spend their lives in crowded and sooty
cities, moaned the hurt they had suffered, the felicity
that appeared to have passed away for ever from
their lives. ^ The sophisticated intellectuals of either
sex, the Bright Young Things and the Brown Elderly
Wrecks, the “ hollow men ” and the “ stuffed
men,” the Prufrocks and the decayed ladies of the
post-war world of the twenties, were all unhappy
creatures to whom life was merely a rat’s alley, a
waste land, a hideous existence made up of prickly-
pear, bits of bones, and pursuing shadows.

This was the mood which found its piercing
articulation in works like James Joyce’s Ulysses and
T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men and The Waste Land.
And not only the broken and empty men of the
disillusioned West but even Indian youths, recoiling
from the death-stare of utter frustration or writhing
under the unescapable vulgarity of so-called
“ civilized ” life or maddened by the vicissitudes of

.347

SRI AUROoIIMOO

our national and communal politics,— thus the
modern man and the modern woman, of the East
no less than of the West, alike felt the flutter of
despairing thoughts, and they all found in Mr. Eliot
a faithful and powerful Laureate ;

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.^

The idea would not solidify into reality but vaporized
instead ; the motion would not realize itself in the
act but was paralyzed instead ; the conception and
the emotion were arrested at the start and would
not lead to creation nor summon the proper response ;

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow.^

With such a dismal and deathly prospect facing
them in whichever direction they turned their eyes,
these unhappy men and women, these sensitive
humans, raised their despairing voice to God or

1 , The Hollow Men,

2, Ibid.

348

IHJi YOCiA ANU liijL, ASRAM

whatever gods there be to send down the life-giving
rains of Faith. The roots of life were quickly drying
up and men pathetically cried with Hopkins — Send
our roots rain !

And some — a mere handful at the beginning —
who had been carefully reading Sri Aurobindo’s
inordinately long sequence, The Synthesis of Yoga,
felt a wrenching turn in their lives — it gave them
pain, it gave them joy, it gave them the pain of
struggle, it gave them the joy of hope — and, making
up their minds once and for all, they boarded the
boat or the train — in either case a “celestial omnibus”
—to Pondicherry. There was no Asram then in
Pondicherry — not as yet ; a few people, those who
had boldly boarded the omnibus, had come to Sri
Aurobindo — from Bengal, from Gujarat, from Tamil
Nad, from the north and the south, and even from
abroad — and, under his immediate guidance, they
were practising Yoga. In the meantime, the
hlother, after a long stay in France and Japan,
returned to Pondicherry on the 24th April, 1920.
The number of disciples now showed a tendency
to increase rather rapidly. The residence of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother and their disciples then
gradually assumed the complexion of a Yogasram,
more from the wish of the sadhakas who desired to
entrust their whole inner and outer life to the
Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or
of Sri Aurobindo. When the Asram began to
develop, it fell to the Mother to organize it on a

.349

SRI AUKOBllSJJO

durable and healthy and all- comprehensive basis ;
Sri Aurobindo himself retired presently into complete
seclusion and hence the whole material and spiritual
charge of the Asram devolved on the Mother.

By and by, fresh buildings were acquired or built
or rented for the Asram ; arrangements were made
for the satisfactory boarding and lodging of both the
inmates or sadhakas of the Asram and the increasing
number of visitors to it ; and, above all, a technique
— at once elastic and potent and universal in ap-
plication — was devised for the spiritual guidance
of the disciples. It can, however, be truly remarked
that the Sri Aurobindo Asram “ has less been
created than grown around him as its centre."^

II

Before describing the Yogasram at Pondicherry
in greater detail, we might here indicate, however
briefly and however sweepingly, the underlying
principles of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. In his great
book. The Life Divine, he told his readers that the
“Life Divine” — the saiyayuga, the new heaven
and new earth — ^was a consummation devoutly to
be desired ; and that it could be — and one day
anyhow would be — realized even in this terrestrial
world of the dichotomies and the dualities. In
the complementary treatise. The Synthesis of Yoga,

I. Sri Aurobindo, a Life Sketch, p. 14.

il-iJi 'iOUA ANO IHi, ASRAM

— a massive book considerably even more volumin-
ous than The Life Divine — Sri Aurobindo told his
readers; “Well, this is how you should reach the
goal of the Life Divine, the goal of Supermanhood
and Supernature ” !

Sri Aurobindo begins this great sequence with
the motto : “ All life is Yoga there are three

rungs in the ladder of life which it is man’s destiny
to ascend one by one ; and bodily life, mental life,
and divine Ufe are these three steps that God and
Nature have devised for aspiring man, Man too
has sprung up from inconscient Matter ; Life and
Mind, that are in a deep swoon in Matter, are
awake in Man ; and now it is the burden of his
greatness — it is the stern law governing his evolu-
tionary status — that he should strive to awaken
the slumbering “ soul ’’ within and reach up in
one vast whirl of endeavour to the divinity, to the
Supermind, incidentally or consequentially lifting
Nature itself to the level of Supemature, This,
then, is to be the mechanics of his Yoga :

“ Yoga is that which, having found the
Transcendent, can return upon the universe and
possess it, retaining the power freely to descend
as well as ascend the great stair of existence,”^

It need hardly be emphasized that there have
been innumerable Yogis in India in the past just

1. Arya, I, August 1914.

2. Ibid., II, September 1914.

SRI AUKOuINUU

as there are several Yogis even in the India of to-day.
Likewise several systems of Yoga have prevailed
and still do prevail in this country — Raja Yoga,
Hatha Yoga, etc.; but Yoga in India may be said
to have pursued only three main paths, known
respectively as Jnana marga, Bhakti marga, and
Karma marga, Although the Gita has been ex-
plained by various commentators as if it advocated
one of the three classical paths to the exclusion of
the others, it is clear, as Sri Aurobindo has shown
in his Essays on the Gita, that the Yoga taught by
the Gita is essentially integral in character, its aim
being atmasiddhi by means of a total self- surrender
and self-consecration to the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo calls his Yoga by various names —
Supramental Yoga, Puma Yoga, Integral Yoga ;
but the names should not mislead us. One may
ask the question if the Gita’s " way ” may not also
be described as “integral” or “puma” Yoga.
Or one may ask if real siddhi is possible in any Yoga
so long as one does not touch the level of the Super-
mind — it is, of course, immaterial whether or not it
is actually called the supramental level — and link
oneself up with Sachchidananda. Thus it is
possible — ^fatally possible — ^to misinterpret the name
and misjudge the nature of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga.
We shall now try, as far as possible in his own
words, to explain why he calls his Yoga “ integral,”
“ new,” and “ supramental ” Yoga.

“ The principle of Yoga,” says Sri Aurobindo,

YOGA ANU THE ASRAM

‘ ‘ is the turning of one or of all pov/ers of our human
existence into a means of reaching the divine Being.
In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one
group of its powers is made the means, vehicle,
path. In a synthetic Yoga, all powers will be
combined and included in the transmuting instru-
mentation.”^ It is, in the language of modern
military strategy, an all-out attack — an attack invol-
ving the use of the army, the navy and the air force
— ^to storm the citadel of the enemy ; likewise, in an
integral or synthetic Yoga, the storm troops of the
muscle, the swift squadrons of the brain, and the
flotillas of the heart, all will be energized and
directed to storm and seize the citadel — the invisible
citadel — of Reality. All roads may ultimately lead
to Rome ; but a pincer has apparently greater chances
of success and a three-pronged movement an
absolute certainty of success. It would appear
that this is the lesson underlying the strategy of Sri
Aurobindo’s Yoga :

“Each Yoga in its process has the character
of the instrument it uses ; thus the Hathayogic
process is psycho-physical, the Rajayogic mental
and psychic, the way of knowledge is spiritual
and cognitive, the way of devotion spiritual,
emotional and aesthetic, the way of works spiritual
and dynamic by action .... but all power is in the
end one, all power is really soul-power,”^

1. Arya, V, p. 283.

2. Ibid.i V, p. 283.

S'; .3

SRI AUKOBXNJJO

Since all is soul -power, this power should be
mobilized on a total basis ; then alone would the
victory be a near and assured thing. All the
powers of the human frame should be thus energized
and disciplined into a body of troops filled with
the zeal and imbued with the determination to
invade Reality, to possess it, to bring it down ; all
the approaches to It should in like manner be filled
with the armoured cars of man’s one-pointed acts,
aspirations, hymns of love ; and success will follow
“ as night the day.”

We can now see why Sri Aurobindo calls his
Yoga ” synthetic ” or ” integral.” But is not the
Gitas way also "synthetic” and "integral”?
Didn’t Ramanuja and his followers also advocate a
linking up of the three paths and didn’t they even
add a fourth, prcipatti marga Didn’t the Tantrik
siddhas base their sadhana on their synthetic view
of human life ? When Sri Aurobindo maintains
that an absolute and serene peace and calm is the
sine qua non on which alone the sadhaka can build
his palace of realization, is he saying anything so
very different from what a Buddha or a Sankara
said so many centuries ago ? How does the absolute
and serene calm that Sri Aurobindo speaks of differ
from the Buddhistic nirvana or the Virasaiva
conception of bayalu nirbayalu ?

I. Vide P. N. Srinivasachari’s The Philosophy of Visishtadvaita,
pp. 304-41 1.

.354

Asr\m [another view from the street]

IHl- YOGA ANU iiUi AtiRAM

Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is synthetic, professedly
synthetic ; and divers threads have woven them-
selves into this intricate fabric, many chords have
entered and fused into this realm of harmony. Sri
Aurobindo has not created his Yoga out of an
impossible vacuum ; he has drawn freely from the
wisdom of the ages, he has drunk deep in the twin
streams of the Vedanta and the Tantra. But
while all the known systems of Yogic discipline
placed before themselves only the aim of man's
salvation as an individual — ^the aim of reaching to
the regions of the spirit and getting rid, once and
for all, of the weary weight of all this unintelligible
world, escaping for all eternity from the fatuity
and misery of terrestrial life, in other words dis-
engaging oneself from the tiger- clasp of samsara —
the aim of Sri Aurobindo’s supramental Yoga is,
not only to seize the Supermind, but also to bring
it down to our earth life, to make it henceforth the
impulse and the law, the motion and the act, the
idea and the reality, of every segment of our terres-
trial life.

We can thus distinguish between three possible
levels in our earthly existence : the life in the
ignorance ; the life that the Lord of the Gita
described to Arjuna ; and the life that we might
live if we hearkened to Sri Aurobindo. These
three levels — or, if you will, these three steps in
the stair of Yoga — are thus briefly described by
Sri Aurobindo :

355

n

SRI AUKOxilNUO

. " The ordinary life consists in work for
personal aim and satisfaction of desire under
some mental or moral control, touched sometimes
by a mental ideal. The Gita’s Yoga consists in
the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the
Divine, the ' conquest of desire, egoless and
desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, and
entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense
of unity with all creatures, oneness with the
Divine. This Yoga (i.e., Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga)
adds the bringing down of the supramentai Light
and Force and (its ultimate aim) the transform-
ation of Nature.”^

It will be seen from the above that the Supra-
mentai or Vijnana Yoga aims at nothing less than a
radical reorganization — a divine transformation — ■
not of individual consciousness alone but even of
the earth- consciousness itself. That is why it can
justifiably be called both an “integral” and a
“new” Yoga — the integrality consisting in the
fact that it takes up the essence and adapts many of
the processes of the older Yogas and the “ newness ”
consisting in “ its aim, standpoint and the totality
of its method.”^ “ The Vedic Rishis,” says Sri
Aurobindo, “ never attained to the Supermind for
the earth or perhaps did not even make the attempt.”^
In result, while the individual solved his own

1. Lights on Yoga, p. 72.

2. Letter to a disciple.

3. The Riddle of this World, p. 2.

356

23 »

UHJi YOGA AND THE ASRAM

personal problem, — ^this might have happened fre-
quently enough, — ^his consistent ignoration of the
earth-crust left the world to its own fate. As the
Mother once explained to her disciples :

"An inner illumination that does not take
any note of the body and the outer life, is of no
great use ; for it leaves the world as it is. This
is what has continually happened till now. Even
those who had a very great and powerful realiza-
tion withdrew from the world to live undisturbed
in inner quiet and peace ; the world was left to
its ways, and misery and stupidity. Death and
Ignorance continued unaffected their reign on
this material plane of existence. .. .An ideal of
this kind may be good for those who want it,
but it is not our Yoga. For we want the divine
conquest of this world, the conquest of all its
movements and the realization of the Divine
here.”^

Other Yogas, even the most ambitious and
integral of them, do not quite visualize the great
aims placed before themselves and placed before
their disciples by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
nor do they handle a method quite so all-compre-
hensive and uncompromising. As Sri Aurobindo
wrote to a disciple eight years ago : "I have not
found this method (as a whole) or anything like it
professed or realized in the old Yogas. If I had,

1. Conversations with the Mother, pp. 29-30,

. 3.^7

SRI AUROBINOO

I should not have wasted my time in hewing out
paths and in thirty years of search and inner creation
when I could have hastened home safely to my
goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed
out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamized,
made secure and public.”

It is, however, quite immaterial whether Sri
Aurobindo’s Yoga is called in one or another way
or whether its claim to be a ” new ” Yoga is con-
ceded or not ; the essential thing is that its aims
are worthy — to put the matter very mildly — ^and
the method it pursues for the realization of its
aims seems to promise (if Sri Aurobindo, the
Mother and their disciples are to be believed) a
reasonable certainty of early success. In the earlier
stages, perhaps, Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga may seem to
be not so very different from others ; but we are
assured that the later stages of the Yoga ” go into
little known or untrodden regions”^; and, while
the earlier stages of the Yoga are described with
exactitude and particularity in books like The Yoga
and its Objects, The Riddle of this World, Lights on
Yoga, Bases of Yoga and, of course, in The Synthesis
of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo has not so far made public
the processes relating to the later stages of his
Yoga.

Nor is Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga at all allied to what
is derisively called “ mysticism and moonshine
Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s writings reveal

I. Letter to a disciple.

358

iJriJE /OGA ANU IHE ASRAM

the fact that they are both fully cognizant of the
latest researches in science and psychology. They
had once been intellectuals themselves “ insistent
on practical results more than any Russell can be
but their partial experiences and realizations had
early facilitated their passage across the sea of
philosophic doubt and subsequent safe landing on
the shores of Faith. Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilip
about ten years ago explaining the standpoint of his
Yoga in the following unambiguous words :

“We (Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) know
well what is the difference between a subjective
experience and a dynamic outgoing and realizing
Force. So, although we have Faith — and whoever
did anything great in the world without having
faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind
him ? — we do not found ourselves on Faith alone,
but on a great ground of Knowledge which we have
been developing and testing all our lives. I think
I can say that I have been testing day and night
for years upon years more scrupulously than any
scientist his theory, his method, on the physical
plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the
aspect of the world around me or disconcerted
by the often successful fury of the adverse forces
who increase in their rage as the Light comes
nearer and nearer to the field of earth and matter.”

Ill

“ Yoga siddhi,” says Sri Aurobindo, “ can be

SRI AUKOBINUO

best attained by the combined working of four great
instruments.”^ These four instruments are Shas-
tra, Utsaha, Guru, and Kala. Shastra is a vague
term ; it is on the face of it a body of knowledge that
helps the process and brings about the fact of realiz-
ation ; the scriptures, the hymns, the systems,
"the flame -word rune,” all axe shastra; but Sri
Aurobindo reminds us that ” the supreme Shastra
of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the
heart of every thinking and living being. The
lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal per-
fection is a bud closed and folded up within us.
It opens swifty or gradually, petal by petal, through
successive realizations, once the mind of man begins
to turn to the Eternal, once his heart, no longer
compressed and confined by attachment to finite
appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever
degree, of the Infinite.” And when man is ” ena-
moured ” of the Infinite, he will surely and imme-
diately evoke the appropriate response from Him ;
for, as Sri Aurobindo pithily puts it, ‘ ‘ he who chooses
the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.” Nay
more : we are already the Infinite in our secret
and veiled nature and Yoga will change this inner

I. This and the following quotations in this section (unless otherwise
indicated) are taken from the revised typescript version of the first six
chapters of Sri Aurobindo’s The Synthesis of Yoga, The fiist of these
chapters was published in The Indian Express of August 15, 1940. The
remaining chapters have not so far been published ; but a French edition
of the six chapters is available.

360

IX-lJi YOGA ANG lUE ASRAM

fact into an open and conscious and fruitful reality :
“ All teaching is self-revealing, all becoming is an
unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret ; self-
knowledge and an increasing consciousness are
the means and the process.”

In the same manner, the supreme guru or teacher
for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga is the Master
" within us.” An external guru, or even a Messiah
like Christ or Krishna or Muhammad, is no doubt
very helpful at the earlier stages of the Yoga. The
sadhaka of the integral Yoga will shun sectarianism,
the egoism and the arrogance that cry — ” My
God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru ” ! —
and will not be satisfied " until he has included
all other names and forms of Deity in his own con-
ception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others,
unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who des-
cends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings
into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.”

Just as the supreme Shastra is “ within,” so
the supreme Guru also is “within”: “It is He
who destroys our darkness by the resplendent
light of His knowledge ; that light becomes within
us the increasing glory of His own self- revelation
.... By the inpouring of His own influence and
presence into us. He enables the individual being
to attain to identity with the universal and trans-
cendent.”

The Shastra and the Master are both lodged
“ within ” ourselves ; but we cannot as yet esta-

361

SRi AUROBINUO

blish connection with them ; we cannot even
recognize their existence ; much less then can we
hearken to their message or make it the basis of
our realization in the individual, the cosmic and
the supra-cosmic planes of existence. Here comes
the need of utsaha or smddha or the " decisive
turn ” that the sadhaka gives to the current of his
life ; “a great and wide spiritual and intelligent
faith, intelligent with the intelligence of that larger
reason which assents to high possibilities, is the
character of the sraddha needed for the integral
Yoga.”^ No doubt, even this sraddha or utsaha
or "decisive turn" is not enough; kala, or the
instrumentality of Time, is also needed. Only
then will the aspiration from below be met by the
Grace from above and bring about the great trans-
formation. But while the instrumentality of Time
cannot be bent according to the sadhaka’s sweet
will and pleasure, the turning of the current of
his own life of aspiration and endeavour is in his
own hands ; and therefore " the first determining
element of the siddhi is ... . the intensity of the
turning, the force which directs the soul inward

The ideal sadhaka should be able to say, in the

Biblical phrase, ‘ My zeal for the lord has eaten
me up "! The sadhaka should be able to cry from
the depths of the heart as does the Mother in a

1. VI, p. 6oi.
•^62

IHfi YOGA ANG iHi. ASRAM

“ prayer ” like the following ;

“To be the divine love, love powerful, in-
finite, unfathomable, in every activity, in all the
worlds of being — it is for this I cry to Thee,
O Lord. Let me be consumed with this love
divine, love powerful, infinite, unfathomable,
in every activity, in all the worlds of being !
Transmute me into that burning brazier so that
all the atmosphere of earth may be purified
with its flame.

In The Mother — ^the great little book that is
both a Handbook of Yoga and a blaze of revela-
tion — Sri Aurobindo has delivered the Gita of the
integral Yoga. In it the “ personal effort “ re-
quired of the sadhaka is described with clarity
and completeness ; and we therefore quote the re-
levant passage here in its entirety :

“ The personal effort required is a triple
labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, — -
an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing — ^the
mind’s will, the heart’s seeking, the ascent of
the vital being, the will to open and make
plastic the physical consciousness and nature ;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature —
rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferen-
ces, habits, constructions, so that the true knowl-
edge may find free room in a silent mind, — ^re-
jection of the vital nature’s desires, demands.

I Prayers and Meditations, p 51 , p. 294 m the French Edition.

SRI AUKUBlNUO

cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride,
arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility
to the Truth, so that the true power and joy
may pour from above into a calm, large, strong
and consecrated vital being, — rejection of the
physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief,
obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, un-
willingness to change, tamas, so that the true
stability of Light, Power, Ananda may esta-
blish itself in a body growing always more
divine ;

surrender of oneself and all one is and has and
every plane of the consciousness and every
movement to the Divine and the Shakti.”^
Once the sadhaka is started — self-started — on
the path of integral Yoga by the agency of his
utsaha and personal elfort, he can battle his way
through thick and thin and reach his destination
at the God-appointed time. “ For me,” confessed
Sri Aurobindo in a letter to a disciple, ” the path
of Yoga has always been a battle as well as a journey,
a thing of ups and downs, of light followed by dark-
ness, followed by greater light but if the sadhaka
is determined to reach the Divine and possess Him
and be possessed by Him, ” there is an absolute
certitude ” that it will all be achieved ultimately —
and “ that is the faith every sadhaka should have
at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through

1. The Mother, pp. 11-13,

364

J.H£, :^0GA ANjJ IHJi ASRAM

every stumble and blow and ordeal.”^

Sri Aurobindo roughly indicates three distinct
stages in his integral Yoga. The first is that of
“ self-prepa ration,” the period of effort when the
sadhaka should endeavour to put forth the “ triple
labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender ”
described above in the extract from The Mother.
The second will be a transitional stage between the
human and the divine working ; during this stage of
the march, ” there will supervene an increasing
purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more
luminous divine response to the Divine Force — but
not to any other.” In the third and culminating
stage, " there is no effort at all, no set method, no
fixed sadhana ; the place of endeavour and tapasya
will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and
happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the
bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature.”
All things are now perceived as God and ” th?
crowning realization of this Yoga is when you be-
come aware of the whole world as the expression,
play or lila of an infinite divine personality, when
you see in all, not the impersonal Sad Atman which
is the basis of manifest existence, — although you do
not lose that knowledge, — but Sri Krishna who at
once is, bases and transcends all manifest and
unmanifest existence, avyakto vyaktat par ah.

1, Letter to a Disciple (1934).

2. The Yoga and its Objects, p. 31.

SRI AUROBlMUO

Or, as the Mother aptly describes the process and
the aim of the integral Yoga : “ What is required

of you is not a passive surrender, in which you
become like a block, but to put your will at the
disposal of the Divine will .... The final aim is to be
in constant union with the Divine, not only in
meditation, but in all circumstances and in all the
active life.”^

But the " personal effort ” comes first ; it is only
when this effort “ delivers the goods ” that further
spurts of ascent in the great stair of Consciousness
could be attempted with any fair prospects of
success. And how difficult is this “ triple labour "

■ — how pertinaciously is its achievement thwarted
by the siege of varied contraries — ^how easy is it to
fall back and lose in an instant the gains of months
and probably years 1 The ” ego-sense ” is a very
tough customer ; the mind is a wanton jade, it is a
slippery cliff :

O the mind, mind has mountains ; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

May who ne'er hung there.^

The life- impulses and mind formations may easily
betray the sadhaka into taking a wrong turning ; and
hence the ego-sense should first be put down with
an iron hand. “The danger,” says Sri Aurobindo,
“ can only be countered by the opening of a now

r. Conversations with the Msther, pp. 23, 25.
2. Gerard Manley Hopkins.

366

IJtlii yoCJA AND IHi: At.KAM

nine-tenths concealed inmost soul. . .that is the
inner light we must liberate ; for the light of this
inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as
we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and
the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the
entire control of our Godward endeavour,”

An all-comprehensive, total and radical change
in the organization of our consciousness so that it
may function as a self-luminous, self-purposive
and all-powerful engine of knowledge and force
and stainless bliss is, according to Sri Aurobindo,
" not only the whole meaning, but, in an increasing
force and by progressive stages, the whole method
of the integral Yoga.” This organization has to be
realized as the culminating result of a three-fold
movement — inward, towards the psychic being ;
an ascent or an upward movement, reaching up to
the Supermind ; a descent or a process of integration,
or the downpour of the spirit to effectuate the supra-
mentalization of our earth-nature. The sadhaka
has to begin with the "inward” movement; and
then, in good time, the upward and the descending
movements too will be possible ; and at long last
all will fuse into the reality of Yoga siddhi. The
purification and energization of the " inner ” life is
only the beginning ; but it is a necessary beginning.
On its broad-based foundation can be reared, surely
and securely, the superstructure of the integral Yoga :
" It is therefore on the accomplishment of the ascent
and the possibility of the full dynamism from the

367

SRI AUROBINDO

highest levels descending into the earth-conscious-
ness that is dependent the justification of Life, its
salvation, its transformation into a transfigured
terrestrial Nature.”

IV

The self-surrender to the Divine and the Shakti —
the sankalpa of atmasamarpana — is thus the first,
decisive and necessaiy turn that alone will help the
sadhaka to pursue the integral Yoga with any fair
prospect of success. The Divine and the Shakti,
God and the Mother, Existence and Consciousness-
Force, Narayana and Lakshmi, Purusha and
Prakriti, Iswara and Iswari — these pairs connote the
same identity in difference. The integral Yoga
demands from the sadhaka a whole-hearted and
total surrender to Her, to the Mother, and through
Her to Him ; but essentially they are one. What-
ever is manifested, is His self-expression in Pier ;
and She is filled with His being ; to us, therefore,
ultimately all is She, and all is He as well.

And yet the sadhaka has to approach Him
through Her,' — through the Mother ; the atma-
samarpana is accordingly made to the Mother in the
first instance ; an unreserved offering of all one
is and has and every plane of one’s consciousness
and the entire adhara itself is to be made to the
Mother — and, of course through Her, to Him also —
” in order that She may, unobstructed by human
reserves, prepare, purify, empty and refill it with the

.'?68

UHju yoga AMD iDt ASRAM

Divine Substance, and so set it that the Supramental
may become the ruling principle of our life on earth.”^
The Mother’s “ grace ” thus occupies a pivotal place
in the integral Yoga; but, if the sadhaka’s faith is
well-grounded and if his aspiration is sincere and if,
above all, his self-surrender is complete and final,
the grace of the Divine Mother must inevitably —
now or to-morrow — and irresistibly pour into his
adhara life-giving and life-transforming nectar and
the great aim of his endeavour will become an
accomplished thing indeed.

The Divine Mother is truly “ the divine Con-
scious Force that dominates all existence, one and
yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is
impossible even for the quickest mind and for the
freest and most vast intelligence. She — ^the

Divine Mother — can be visualized in her transcen-
dent, cosmic-universal, and individual manifesta-
tions ; these are but “ ways of being of the Mother ”
and all are resolved in the unity of the triune
Sachchidananda. And yet the mind in the Ignorance
— so long as it is not wholly emancipated — ^wants
some Powers and Personalities of the Divine Mother
which it can easily recognize, derive inspiration from
and offer sacrifices to : four such Powers and
Personalities have been described by Sri Aurobindo
in The Mother.

I. T. V. Kapali Sastri (The Indian Express, Darshan Supplement),
a. The Mother, pp. 35-6.

.369

SRI AUKOBINDO

The main part of The Mother — the latter half of
the book — that describes the four Shaktis, four of
the Mother’s leading Powers and Personalities, is
perhaps the most inspired piece of writing in the
whole body of Sri Aurobindo’s prose works. It has
been called ‘ ‘ the mantra of mantras, the mystery of
mysteries, — for the seeker of knowledge it is the
divine Gayatri of Para Vidya, for the worker it is the
resplendent staircase of truth, for the devotee it is
the immortal message of divine love. So perfect-
ly is the great revelation articulated that it has to be
read at a stretch in a mood of imaginative and
spiritual concentration ; then only can one apprehend
in a single act its vast potencies and splendid
modulations. Sri Aurobindo has seen the four
Shaktis — he has known them, he has been them ; his
rhythms and his words and the resultant music have
therefore the chime and the toll and the sweep of a
fervent Sanskrit gadya like Ramanuja’s Vaicuntha
Gadya or Venkatanatha’s- Raghuvira Gadya.

Sri Aurobindo gives first a summary description
of the four Shaktis, to be followed immediately
afterwards by a more detailed and an even more
evocative and minute description ; but we have here
space only to extract the preliminary description and
differentiation :

" Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of
her leading Powers and Personalities have stood

T. Birendrakishote Roy Ghoudhury, Sri Aurob'mdo Mandir Annual,
1943, P- 229.

370

Dcrshan Sidelights

THji YOGA AND THE AbKAM

in front in her guidance of this Universe and in
her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her
personality of calm wideness and comprehending
wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible
compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty
and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her
power of splendid strength and irresistible passion,
her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her
impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A
third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her
deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine
rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her
compelling attraction and captivating grace. The
fourth is equipped with her close and profound
capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless
work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.
Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their
several attributes and it is these powers that they
bring with them into the world, manifest in a
human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found
in the divine degree of their ascension in those
who can open their earthly nature to the direct
and living influence of the Mother. To the four
we give the four great names, Maheshwari,
Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.”^

I The Mother, pp. 48-50 Corresponding with these four Powers
and Personahties of the Shakti, there are also four similar Aspects of Ishwara
— viz., Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, typifymg the
ancient dynamic differentiation between the Brahmin, the Kshatriya,
the Vaishya and the Sudra respectively. (Vide Nolini Kanta Gupta,

“ Lines of the Descent of Consciousness," Sri Aurobmdo Mandir Anmah
1943, p. 14).

->4

371

SRI AUROBiNJJO

One wonders as one reads these twenty-five pages
whether one has here a memorable recordation of
demonstrable fact or only the subtle elaboration of
a poet’s fancy ; one realizes presently that these
portraits in miniature are but faithful prints of the
four great Aspects, or suggestive poses, of the
supreme Mother, that they are poetically and utterly
and quintessentially true portraits of the Mother,
that they are truly the visions that one can see if only
one learned to exercise one’s own soul’s sight and
sense of apprehension. In any case, judged as
English prose, these passages are phosphorescent in
their steady luminosity and never did a Sir Thomas
Browne or a Walter Savage Landor write anything
finer nor even anything half as richly evocative with
the rhythms of the spirit.

While the four Aspects of the Divine Shakti
are equally the symbols and emanations of Her
Power and filer Personality, Maheshwari in par-
ticular has “ more than any other the heart of the
universal Mother and her “ compassion is end-
less and inexhaustible.”^ The gift of the Mother’s
grace can be more easily and naturally invoked
from Maheshwari than from Mahakali or even from
Mahalakshmi or Mahasaraswati ; but Mahakali
too is the Mother and in her too love wells up
from the unplumbed depths of her Being to spray
the devotee with peace and gladness and an immense

24 *

I. The Mother, pp. 53-4.

372

THli YOGA AND IHJti ASRAM

quietude. Maheshwari or Mahakali, Mahalakshmi
or Mahasaraswati, She is always the Divine Mother,
and She is behind all that is done in the universe,
behind all thoughts, all passions, all delights, all
actions. If the sadhaka is keen on siddhi, if he
calls to Her from his psychic depths in a mood of
single-hearted self-consecration. Her grace is sure
to respond, and the sadhaka is certain to achieve
his aim. Hence it is that, not any human endeavour
or tapasya alone, but it is the Mother’s mediation,
it is the Mother’s grace, that in the final reckoning
can “ rend the lid and tear the covering and shape
the vessel and bring down into this world of obs-
curity and falsehood and death and suffering
Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal’s
Ananda.”^

V

We now pass on to a consideration of one of the
potent means by which Sri Aurobindo has main-
tained his connection with his disciples and, indeed,
with the world outside the Yogasram at Pondicherry,
— we refer, of course, to the Letters. While Sri
Aurobindo has for two or three decades consist-
ently avoided purposeless talks in private or in
public, he has nevertheless kept himself in close
touch with his disciples — the sadhakas of the

I. The Mother, p. 84.

373

SRI AUKOBllSIJJO

integral Yoga — with their trials, their hopes, their
“dark nights” and their “disturbed nights,”
their exultations and their exhilarations, their fears
and even their “ leaden-eyed despairs and he has
again and again sent them in their extremity the
true balm of spiritual succour in the shape of a
kindly-worded, conversationally spoken message
or letter, an epistle long or short, gay or serious,
but always springing from the heart and in every
way appropriate to the mood of the correspondent
and the nature of the question ; it is said that at
one time Sri Aurobindo used to sit up half the
night, and often whole nights, to answer his corres-
pondents adequately and convincingly ; and this
went on for weeks and for months and for years !
And an important letter sent to a particular disciple
generally became soon the common property of
all the inmates of the Asram, and all derived spiri-
tual benefit from it, each according to his or her
peculiar need and capacity.

There must now be in existence several thou-
sands of these letters ; and they all hum and sparkle
and whisper, at once a voice near one’s ear and a
voice from above ; they are neither poems, nor
rhetorical or ornate pieces of prose, but they re-
produce rather the delicate currents of common
speech ; they are best described as verbal curtains
that shut us in — and then we almost decipher the
very features and recognize the unique modula-
tions of the voice of the remarkable writer of these

374

•ItLia YOGA AND IflJi ASRAM

letters ! A letter like the one written recently on
the occasion of Hashi’s death, ^ or an earlier letter
like the one Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilip on the
“logic of his doubts,”® being impeccably phrased
in rhythms akin to those of subdued but nervous
conversational speech, plays upon one’s tongue
with disarming ease and familiarity. One can
picture to oneself this imaginary scene — the chela
agitatedly putting forward one animadversion after
another, the guru patiently and almost serenely or
smilingly meeting them, explaining, arguing, per-
suading. Only a casual letter — a ” trivial ” letter !
— but it reveals the writer, explains the core of
his faith, and, incidentally, illustrates his prose
art.

Many of the letters that deal mainly with Yoga
— either the underlying principles of the Yoga or
intimate personal problems like those relating to
food, desire, sex, illness, sleep, calm, peace, etc. —
have now been edited and published in book form.
The Riddle of this World, Lights on Yoga and Bases
of Yoga — stimulating books all of them, containing
some of the finest prose in all the Sri Aurobindo
canon — are all the fruits of the Asram period and
there is very little doubt that a lot more remains to
be published. But this much is certain : Sri Auro-
bindo’s words, seemingly impersonal and austerely

I. Quoted m Dilip’s Aurobindo Prasanghe, pp. 108-113.
a. Quoted in Dilip’s Tirthankar, pp. 365-7.

37‘i

SRI AUROBINDO

expressed in classical English prose, come to us
always with the friendliness of a private conver-
sation.

It must not be supposed that Sri Aurobindo’s
letters as a rule deal only with “ difficult ” themes
like philosophy and Yoga. Sri Aurobindo’s is a
philosophy of life and hence embraces all life ;
his Yoga, again, is the “ integral ” Yoga and accor-
dingly tries to exert a chastening and purifying
influence on all human activities. Thus a casual
reader of Sri Aurobindo’s letters or of the Mother’s
“ Conversations ” (which owed their origin to the
Mother’s talks with her disciples) will be struck by
their direct and perennially human appeal to us.
Further, simply as a matter of fact, Sri Aurobindo’s
letters are not always confined to a discussion of
knotty points in his philosophy and Yoga like the
" graded worlds ” and the " iirtermediate zone.”
There are also letters on a variety of other subjects
— and especially are there a very large number of
letters on poetry, on comparative criticism, and
on several individual poets. A disciple would
send some question or other for answer, some poem
or prose extract for explanation and comment, and
Sri Aurobindo would be ” provoked ” to giving a
beautifully phrased reply, redolent of wisdom and
learning and humour. And so the questions rush
into the sanctum sanctorum and return the next
morning or the same evening with their epistolary
treasure, to feed and gladden and enrapture their
devotees.

.376

IHj:, yoga ANU iHE ASRAM

What a diversity of themes and what a variety
of approach ! The twelve great masters of prose
style in the world ; ^schylus and Dante ; Dante
and Shakespeare ; Shakespeare and Blake ; the poetry
of the school of Pope and Dry den ; Shelley’s Sky-
lark ; Planck and the Quantum Theory ; Ouspen-
sky ; automatic writing ; Baudelaire’s “ vulgarity” ;
Anatole France’s ironising ; spiritism, ghosts, popu-
lar superstitions ; Cheiro and Astrology ; de la
Mare’s Listeners ; austerity in poetry ; architecto-
nics in poetic composition ; the character of Rama ;
limits of personal vagaries in criticism ; relation
between length of poems and purity of poetic ex-
pression ; the unescapable subjective element in
all criticism of poetry ; the quantitative metre in
English ; on translating poetry ; the place of Ber-
nard Shaw in English literature ; the Overmind
inspiration in poetry ; Yoga and the fine arts ;
the poetry of Shahid Suhrawardy, of Amalkiran
( K. D. Selhna), of Dilip, of Harindranath Chatto-
padhyaya, of Bharati Sarabhai, of Armando Men-
ezes ; the vagaries of modern English poetry ;
the poetry of D. H, Lawrence ; the poetry of Arjava
( J. A. Chadwick ) , . . . indeed, there is no end !

There is not space here to give excerpts from
Sri Aurobindo's letters in order adequately to indi-
cate their richness, their scintillating wit, their
unobtrusive humour, their unexpected turns of
phrase, their Americanisms and colloquialisms
which come just at the appropriate places, their

177

SRI AUxvOBINUO

memorable flashes, their tone of gentle familiarity,
and, above all, their effectual revelation of a great
and unique personality whose capacity for multi-
ple concentration could alone have enabled him to
write so often, to so many correspondents, on such a
variety of themes, and always with confidence,
pellucid clarity, and a self-evident finality. Here
are a few lines, as it were carelessly dashed off,
and yet they succeed in differentiating between
Goethe and Shakespeare with force and finality :

“ Yes, Goethe goes much deeper than Shakes-
peare ; he had an incomparably greater intellect
than the English poet and sounded problems of
life and thought Shakespeare had no means of
approaching even. But he was certainly not a
greater poet ; I cannot either admit that he was
an equal. He wrote out of his intelligence, and
his style and movement nowhere came near the
poetic power, the magic, the sovereign expression
and profound or subtle rhythms of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was a supreme poet and one might
almost say, nothing else ; Goethe was by far
the greater man and the greater brain, but he
was a poet by choice rather than by the very
necessity of his being. He wrote his poetry as
he did everything else with a great skill and
effective genius, but it was only part of his genius
and not the whole. And there is a touch want-
ing — ^the touch of an absolute poetic inevit-
ability ; this lack leaves his poetry on a lower

.378

itit. YOGA iHli ASRAM

level than that of the few quite supreme poets.
Not less profound nor less satisfactory and final
is the distinction that Sri Aurobindo draws, in
the course of the same letter, between Vyasa and
Valmiki on the one hand and Homer and Shakes-
peare on the other.

In many of the letters current affairs also are
glanced at and occasionally commented upon.
Sri Aurobindo has certainly little in common with
the popular conception of a Yogi ; he rather sur-
prises one with his uncanny knowledge of the minu-
tiae as also of the broad outlines of current affairs.
Quotation is again difficult, but the following brief
note well illustrates Sri Aurobindo’ s awareness
of the contemporary world scene no less than his
wisdom and his disarming humour :

“ Seized with lunacy ? But this implies that
the nation is ordinarily led by reason. Is it
so ? Or even by common sense ? Masses of
men act upon their vital push, not according
to reason ; individuals too do the same. If
they call in their reason, it is as a lawyer to plead
the vital’s cause.”^

In another letter he discusses the importance of
humour ; “ Sense of humour ? It is the salt of
existence. Without it the world would have got
utterly out of balance — it is unbalanced enough

1. Quoted in Dilip’s Anami, p. 252.

2. Quoted in Dilip's Suryamukhi, p. 41 1.

SRI AUROBINDO

already — and rushed to blazes long ago.”

Sri Aurobindo has also been closely watching
the present world conflagration which assumes
in his eyes the colour of a cosmic conflict between
the Divine and Asuric forces in the world, fie
has boldly and openly supported the cause of the
United Nations, and he has called the war really
the Mother’s war. In a letter written to a disciple
on the 29th July 1942, Sri Aurobindo said in un-
faltering accents :

‘‘It is a struggle for an ideal that has to
establish itself on earth in the life of humanity,
for a Truth that has yet to realize itself fully and
against a darkness and falsehood that are trying
to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the
immediate future.... It is a struggle for the
liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in
which men have freedom and room to think and
act according to the Light in them and grow in
the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be
the slightest doubt that if one side wins there will
be an end of all such freedom and hope of light
and truth and the work that has to be done will
be subjected to conditions which would make it
humanly impossible ; there will be a reign of
falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and
degradation for most of the human race such as
people in this country do not dream of and cannot
yet at all realize. If the other side that has
declared itself for the free future of humanity

IHC. YOGA AND iJt-li: ASRAM

triumphs, this terrible danger will have been
averted and conditions will have been created
in which there will be a chance for the ideal to
grow, for the Divine Work to be done, for the
spiritual truth for which we stand to establish
itself on the earth. Those who fight for this
cause are fighting for the Divine and against the
threatened reign of the Asura.

It is also a well-known fact that at the time of the
Cripps negotiations, Sri Aurobindo, alone among
the leading personalities in India, openly advocated
an immediate acceptance of the “ proposals. ” Had
India hearkened to his advice then, she might have
been spared all this Atlas-weight of frustration, this
creeping paralysis that seems to have penetrated
the very core of our national life ^ ; but that was not
to be !

Secluded and silent and calm he may be ; but
his pulses respond every second to the multitudinous
affairs of " dear and dogged ” humanity. Along with
the Mother, he is the spiritual director of the Asram —
of the three hundred and fifty permanent sadhakas
who constitute its complex and harmonious life.
His very presence — albeit for the most part invisible
—itself exerts an enormous, an incommensurable
influence on the inner and outer life of the sadhakas.
The earnestness and the sincerity, the wisdom and

1. Quoted in Nolini Kanla Gupta’s pamphlet, The World War : Its
Inner Bearing (1942).

2. Written in November 1943.

381

SRI AURUBINJJO

the humour — above all, the admixture of the divine
and the human — in the letters to the sadhakas
captivate them, carry them along (as the baby cat
is carried by its mother), and none complains —
complains, that is, really seriously. Sri Aurobindo
sometimes makes admonition itself a honeyed
sweetness as in this letter : "You have the reputa-
tion of being a fierce and firebrand doctor who
considers it a crime for patients to have illness. You
may be right, but tradition demands that a doctor
should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle,
sweet like sugar and jolly like jam. So ! And,
although he is but occupying a corner of the Asram
premises, unseen and unlieard, unnoticed and
unphotographed and unadvertized, he is nevertheless
in the thick of the fight — ^in the thick of the cosmic
struggle going on in the Pacific and on the Burman
border and in the vast regions of Russia and in the
approaches to Rome and in the Atlantic between the
Continents — and he will not spare himself, no, not
for an instant ; and he is but telling the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth when he
says : " My life has been a battle from its early

years and is still a battle ; the fact that I wage it now
from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well
as others that are external makes no difference to its
character.

I. Letter to Nirod.

3. Letter to a disciple (1935).

XJrtii YUIXA AND THE ASRAM

VI

The Yogasram at Pondicherry that has grown
around Sri Aurobindo during the past two decades-
is a hallowed area and a unique spiritual laboratory.
The Asram has often been the victim of mis-
apprehension and misinterpretation ; but he who
runs can see what the Asram is and what it stands
for. It is not a public body — ^religious, sociah
educational, or political— with its written constitu-
tion, its bye-laws, its slumbering sub-committees,
its democratic cross-currents, its general inefficiency ;
the Asram is “ just the house or houses of a Teacher
or Master of spiritual philosophy in which he
receives those who come to him for the teaching

and practice Such Asrams have existed in

India since many centuries before Christ and still
exist in large numbers. All depends on the Teacher
and ends with his lifetime, unless there is another
Teacher who can take his place.

While it is true that Sri Aurobindo Asram shares
with all genuine Asrams past and present its spiritual
character, it is not exactly the kind of Asram we
commonly visualize — an inaccessible nook some-
where 'in Dandakaranya or the Himalayas where a
set of sadhus do lapasya to be able to get for ever
beyond the endless chain of birth and death and
birth again. On the other hand, the Yogasram at
Pondicherry is— to use the word in no derogatory

I. The Teaching and the Asram of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 1-2.

SRI AUKOuINDO

sense — a modern Asram. It is located (or shall we say
— it has located itself ?) near the seashore in much
the cleanest part of Pondicherry, It now consists
of a number of buildings scattered over a wide
enough area. In the main Asram building live Sri
Aurobindo, the Mother, and some of the veteran
sadhakas ; the Library (a good one and a growing
one), the Reading Room, the Asram bank, the
Meditation Hall and court -yard, are also in the main
Asram building or compound. In the other impor-
tant buildings are housed the Dining Hall, the dairy,
the bakery, the laundry, the engineering workshop,
the granary, the bindery, the dispensary, the Asram
schools, all being under the management of the
sadhakas. The Mother supervises every little item
of the organization of the Asram and all the sadhakas
work as her instruments, the work being invariably
offered as a sacrifice to the Divine Mother and the
Supreme.

Whether one loiters among the trees and flowers
of the Asram, or sits by oneself in the cool and
restful hours of the evening, or attends Anilbaran’s,
Rishabhehand’s or Dixit’s instructive readings from
and expositions of The Life Divine, or visits Dilip
House to catch the strains of melodious music, or
exchanges suggestive words with a Nolini, an Amrita,^
a Purani, a Prithwisingh, a Premanand, or even if
one merely watches the sadhakas at work- — it may
be only a matter of rolling up or unrolling the mats,
or collecting and sorting out the flowers, or washing

384

iHii VOGA ANO THE ASRAM

and piling up the plates and cups and spoons, or
even no more than doing " gate duty ” — and ever
and always one is sure to repeat the words of Horace .
Alque inter silvas Academi qucsrere verum (" And
seek for truth in the garden of Academus ”)d VVe
may, however, modify the exhortation thus : “ And

seek for truth in the Asram at Pondicherry ” !

It is a fair description of the Yogasram at Pondi-
cherry to call it the first, obscure, faltering, none-the-
less highly promising, preliminary sketch of “ a new
Heaven and a new Earth. ” Sri Aurobindo himself
nowadays hardly ever sees people and corresponds
but rarely even with his disciples. But he gives
darshan four times a year and blesses his disciples
and the permitted visitors to the Asram. The
darshan^ days are festive occasions in the life of the
Asram ; people from all over India meet in the
Asram and obtain darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother, For the rest, the sadhakas can read his
published works or unpublished correspondence,
chant his unique recent experiments in " futurist ”
poetry, or read the Mother's Conversations or
Prayers and Meditations, and otherwise summon
whatever inspiration they can from their mere
proximity to the Master and the Mother. As a
rule, Sri Aurobindo’s influence seems to be deeply
felt in the Asram and all — one may say, even inani-
mate things — are apparently moulded by this subtle

I Epistles, II, ii, 1. 45.

2. \ ide the present writer's “ Darshan of Sri Aurobindo " (Human
Affairs, Kovember 1943).

:i85

SKI AUROKlNUU

and powerful influence ; likewise, the Mother’s
living presence and influence is also purposive, dis-
tinct and potent, and she is verily adored by the
sadhakas “ as the very Incarnation of the supreme
Shakti.

The claim can also be made that some of the
principles outlined in books like The Psychology of
Social Development and The Ideal of Human Unity
are being actually put into practice — though only
on the scale of a miniature — in the constitution and
daily life of the Yogasram. The three hundred and
fifty inmates of the Asram are drawn from different
parts of India, with a noticeable sprinkling of Euro-
peans and Americans as well; there are young and old
people, there are men, women, and children. There
are poets, musicians, artists, retired civilians, ex-
professors, physicians and surgeons, engineers,
sadhus, ex-lawyers ; all, high and low, — ^there is
really neither high nor low in the Asram scale —
engage themselves in some fruitful action or another
according to the Mother’s direction ; and “ the
Mother deals with each person differently according
to his true need (not what he himself fancies to be
his need) and his progress in the sadhana and his
nature. The constitution of the Asram thus
replaces the ideal of alms-begging by purposive
work, work offered as a sacrifice to the Mother,

1. Sisirkuraar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo ; A Homage, p. 27.

2. Sri Aurobindo, Letter to a disciple (1930).

.186

•IHE YOGA AImD 'iJblE ASRAM

work dedicated to the Divine ; and at the same time,
it delivers the sadhakas from all unlovely preoccupa-
tions with money and the problem of bread-winning
and the concomitant degradations and difficulties.
All the sadhakas are one in the Mother ; all meditate
in the presence of the Mother ; all put their adhara
in its entirety at the disposal of the Mother ; and in
the eyes of the sadhakas, all work ranks the same, all
is the Mother’s work, all is done as a perpetual
reaffirmation of the sankalpa of atmasamarpana.

The stray responsive visitor to the Yogasram at
Pondicherry is sure to sniff at once the “atmosphere ”
of the place — its feeling for rhythm and its sense of
harmony, its mellowed lights and its whispered
sweetnesses, its enveloping peace and its soul-
elevating piety. The complicated wheels of the
Asram — as complicated as are the processes and
concerns of Nature — nevertheless revolve unseen,
almost as effortlessly and unconsciously as they do
in the seething world of Nature. The Asram is but
the rough sketch of the Promised Land, — just a few
dots and dashes and shapely curves, — ^but even then
one can discover in them the vague configurations,
the confident commencement, of “ a new Heaven
and a new Earth. ’’ The Yogasram is the dynamic
phase of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and is as yet only a
crisp and charming promissory note ; but — and this
makes all the difference — ^the seal and the signature
are Sri Aurobindo’s !

387

75

25 *

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A HOMAGE
I

Ever since Sri Aurobindo’s departure from
Calcutta in 1910, attempts have been made from
time to time to bring him back to active political
life. His friends, his former colleagues, the mana-
gers of one forward political party or another, all have
in different ways tried to persuade Sri Aurobindo
to re-enter the political arena and lead the country.
Once the great Lala Lajpat Rai himself paid a visit
to Pondicherry and tried to break the prolonged
spell of Sri Aurobindo’s retirement : in vain ! The
lure of the presidentship of the Indian National
Congress has itself proved powerless to make Sri
Aurobindo change his mind. He would not come
out of his seclusion even to preside over the Rama-
krishna centenary celebrations !

When the late Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das,
himself then at the heyday of his political pre-
eminence, requested Sri Aurobindo to re-enter
politics, he received a very characteristic reply ;

“ I think you know my present idea and the
attitude towards life and work to which it has
brought me. I see more and more manifestly

391

SRI AUKOBINUU

that man can never get out of the futile circle
the race is always treading, until he has raised
himself on to a new foundation. I have become
confirmed in a perception which I had, always,
less clearly and dynamically then, but which
has now become more and more evident to me,
that the true basis of work and life is the spiri-
tual : that is to say, a new consciousness to be
developed only by Yoga. But what precisely
was the nature of the dynamic power of this
greater consciousness ? What was the condi-
tion of its effective truth ? How could it be
brought down, mobilized, organized, turned upon
life ? How could our present instruments —
intellect, mind, life, body — be made true and
perfect channels for this great transformation ?
This was the problem I have been trying to work
out in my own experience and I have now a sure
basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of
the secret I have still to remain in retire-

ment. For I am determined not to work in the
external field till I have the sure and complete
possession of this new power of action — not to
build except on a perfect foundation.”^
Likewise, when a further attempt was made, soon
after Chittaranjan’s death, to persuade Sri Auro-
bindo to return from his cell and fill the vacant
place of political leadership in Bengal and all-India,

I. Quoted in Dilip's Tirlhankar, p. 354.

.3Q2

A HOMAGE

Sri Aurobindo unhesitatingly decided to remain in
Pondicherry. And he has so far chosen to remain
in retirement in his own secluded rooms in the
Yogasram.

And yet Sri Aurobindo’s letter to Chittaranjan
raises one or two questions. At the time of writing
the letter, in other words about twenty years ago,
Sri Aurobindo was still on liis spiritual quest. He
had no doubt achieved a measure of realization
already and was privileged therefore to rest in one
of the inns of tranquillity on the way to the final
goal. But the battle was not over by any means ;
he had yet to effect the final great transforma-
tion of our earth nature into supernature ; the rend-
ing of the veil which separates us from the Real-
Idea, the supramental consciousness, must have
become an accomplished fact; for he had already
written with knowledge and authority about the
supermind but complete possession of the goal
had not then been reached. "I am determined

not to work in the external field till has

he still not obtained sure and complete possession
of this “ new power of action” ? If he has, — ^what
next ? We cannot answer these questions ....
only Sri Aurobindo can, and he will answer them
some time, in his own way ; perhaps, indeed, the
answer is contained in the following letter that
he wrote to a disciple :

” I may say also that I did not leave politics
because I felt I could do nothing more there ;

SRI AUROBINDO

such an idea was very far from me. I came
away because I got a very distinct adesh in the
matter. I have cut connection entirely with
politics.”

In any case, such speculations on our part would
be merely puerile and would not lead anywhere.

II

But one thing is clear : boy, or adolescent youth,
or teacher of literature, or lover of fair Bengal, or
knight-errant of Indian nationalism, or servant
of humanity, or torch-bearer of the Divine, —
Sri Aurobindo has travelled far afield indeed, but
only along the same road and always towards the
same goal. He has always been inclined to ask :
What do they know of love and service who only
themselves love and serve ? The centre of gravity
that motivates action should be shifted further and
further away from oneself, achieving fresher and
wider integrations all the time : love not yourself,
love Bengal ; serve not yourself, serve the Mother
and her seventy million souls ! Presently the tune
changed, it became deep, it became insistent, it
echoed and re-echoed in his ear : love not yourself,
love India ; serve her, help her to regain her former
glory. Once more the tune changed, but it conti-
nued to be as terribly alluring as ever : love only
Sanatana Dharraa, serve her loyally, and help her
to re-establish herself. Yet once more the rdga —

A HOMAGji

as in a ragamalika — flowed into another and the
dulcet notes insinuated another exhortation into
his ear : love humanity, serve humanity, give it a
helping hand as it strives, in however purblind a
fashion, to divinize itself ! This was the reason
why Sri Aurobindo declared, in 1921, that the in-
tegral Yoga “ is not for ourselves alone, but for
humanity.”^

One further integration, too, was possible, and
it occurred in the fullness of time : no, no, Sri
Aurobindo said. Yoga is not for the sake of humanity,
— it is, first and last and all the time, only for the
sake of the Divine. As the Mother has categori-
cally declared :

"It is not the welfare of humanity that we
seek but the manifestation of the Divine. We
are here to work out the Divine Will, more truly,
to be worked upon by the Divine Will, so that
we may be its instruments for the progressive
incorporation of the Supreme and the establish-
ment of His reign upon the earth.’’®

Sri Aurobindo, then, has always been forging
ahead, his horizons have ever been widening, the
field of his spiritual action has ever been broadening
and extending. He has now reached the culmina-
tion of his labours and achieved what M. Jacques
Maritain would call a " universal integration ’’ ;

1, The Yoga and its Objects, p. $.

2. Words of the Mother, pp. 39-40.

SRI AUKOBINJJU

he has arrived at a total world view that comprehends
and transcends all his earlier, incomplete views.
After a lifetime of ceaseless yearnings and assiduous
climbings on the steep stair of spirituality, Sri
Aurobindo has at last been favoured, it would seem,
with the beatific vision of Sachchidananda on the
very Pisgah heights of his own inveterate striving.
He has caught indeed a vision, a vision of the Eternal,
a vision of triune glory, a vision in the furthest
beyond of transformed Supernature ; but the vision
is not, on its highest peaks, a concrete embodied
reality as yet ; something has come down of the
power or the influence, but not the thing itself, far
less its whole.

Ill

At the present juncture in human • history
especially, the outlook is on the face of it dim and
uncertain and most depressing. We seem to be
threatened with the sure crash of most human values.
Sensitive men and women cannot now help patheti-
cally looking before and after and pining for what
is not. Now more than ever do we want a Teacher
— a Messiah — ^who could give us Faith, who could
give us a Revelation, who could show us the straight
road to the Ramarajya, the Satyayuga, the Golden
Age, the new Heaven and the new Earth of our
fervent imaginations. And Sri Aurobindo — ^the
Prophet of Supernature and the Pilgrim of Eternity —
is the great Power and Personality that the Time

306

A HOMAtii.

Spirit has evolved out of the labour of the ages !

He is a Power, he is a Personality ; but his Power
and his Personality alike refuse to be cribbed within
the confines of material categories. ' Power ’ and
' Personality ’ are elusive terms, even when we are
considering them only in relation to average speci-
mens of humanity ; but what can we possibly
know — or hope to know — about the Power and the
Personality of a truly unique spiritual phenomenon
like Sri Aurobindo ? His real “ inner ” life has
always remained a closed book to us ; we have only
been able to notice and describe some of the
“ accretions.” This great Maharshi’s yogic
strength, as we have striven to show in the preceding
pages, has manifested itself, now in one way or
direction, now in another, always exemplifying the
Lord’s assurance that Yoga is veritably “ skill in
works ” — yogah karmasu kowshalam ! And thus
we have been privileged to establish a measure of
intimacy, however imperfect, with Sri Aurobindo’s
many powers and personalities — the dreamer, the
idealist, the poet ; the scholar, the critic, the teacher ;
the tireless publicist, the intrepid speaker, the
flaming apostle of resurgent nationalism ; the phi-
losopher, the poet of Yoga, the architect of a new
Heaven and a new Earth !

The picture we have tried to present in our pages
is no doubt much less than the whole truth, for Sri
Aurobindo, while he has been and is all the varied
parts he has played and is playing in the drama of

3Q7

SRI AR'KOBINDO

Life, while he is a Man among men and a leader of
mankind, is also more than man, he tantalizingly
includes and exceeds, transcends and transforms
the poet and the politician, the prophet and the
pilgrim.

No ; Sri Aurobindo’s Power and Personality
cannot be evaluated ; we can but beg the question
and call him a Yogi, a Rishi, — he is, indeed, many
Rishis in one, a puma Rishi ! He at any rate is not
reduced to a feeling of inutility by the prevalent
crisis in human history : on the contrary, he is able
to look forward with unhurried self-confidence to
the day when the great transformation will in fact
take place, when harmony will reign in the place of
the prevalent discords, when the chaos of the hour
will resolve itself into the dancing star of the Divine’s
utter fashioning, when the Asuric forces that now
rage around us in a Dance of Death will all have been
finally liquidated, when Man will master his fate at
last and wake into the baptism of a divine rebirth.

The mere fact of Sri Aurobindo’s presence
amongst us — for he is with us perpetually though
we do not see him — is a promise of liberation to
ailing humanity, And Sri Aurobindo, the Prince
of Givers, gives us the blest assurance that the
felicity that is his shall be ours as well ! The hour
is not far off when corruption will put on incorrup-
tion and desire will grow desireless and incapacity
will shed its weakness and grow into the puissance
of Conscious-Force and immitigable death will lose

.398

A HOI.IAGJi

its present sting and grow into immortality. Sri
Aurobindo is the “ mighty Prophet ” and " seer
blest ” who has taught us this mantra of our immi-
nent liberation. We shall therefore conclude by
offering our “homage” to the Master in these
words of Stephen Langton :

Vem Sancte Spiritus
Et emitte ccelitus
Lucis tuae radium.

Come, O Creator Spirit, come.

And make within our hearts thy home ;

To us thy grace celestial give.

Who of thy breathing move and live.^

I. Sequence in Mass of Pentecost. The English rendering is by the late
Robert Bridges.

.199

APPENDIX

A NOTE ON “ THOUGHT THE PARACLETE
I , — Introduction.

A short poem of but twenty-two lines, Thought the
Paraclete is nevertheless among the most characteristic of
Sri Aurobindo's poetic utterances. Along with five other
equally typical pieces, it appeared about two years ago ;
but the poems were apparently composed many years earlier.
They are now reprinted in the second volume of Sri Auro-
bindo’s Collected Poems and Plays and appear in the section
entitled " Transformation and Other Poems."

Thought the Paraclete is a sudden, swift jet of piercing,
unconventional melody. One reads and re-reads it, aston-
ished and awed into a rapture ; one is puzzled by its currents
of thought and play of imagery ; one is dazzled and thrilled
by its radiation of light and riot of colour ; one is chastened
at last into an ineffable quietude by its sheer art, its suggestion
of both lightning motion and an unearthly peace. There
is no doubt at all that the poem embodies a vast and potent
revelation 1

And yet Thought the Paraclete puzzles and intrigues the
reader, for, while catching its general diift at once, he is
none-the-less all but floored by its imagery and its colour
symbolism. The poem is clearly the expression of an ex-
perienced ascent of Thought — Thought that, like a shooting
star, spans a vast zone in a blinding fraction of time. But
although we can intellectually strive to reproduce the ex-
perience in our own minds, it will be but a lifeless fagade,

I. First published in The Advent, Vol. I, No. i (Feb. 1944).

403

SRI AUR0BINi:)0

a grandiose proxy bloated with mere mental stuff. The
experience as such is unfortunately denied to most of us,
and hence we pathetically blink in our bewilderment when
the poet describes the thrills he has braved, the splendours
he has glimpsed, the beatitudes he has been.

It is not suggested here — ^far from it ! — that spiritual
experiences should not constitute the subject-matter of
poetry. A poet can coin his unique spiritual adventures
into imperishable poetry even as he can deftly turn his emo-
tional responses into an elegy or a song or an ode. But
spiritual experiences being per se ineffable are for that very
reason incommunicable through the medium of our every-
day vocabulary. And yet spiritual experiences are dear
to the heart of man, and he would gladly clutch at the intang-
ible, and capture and retain it (if he could !) as a part of him-
self. That is why we cherish in our heart’s tabernacle
revelations like Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven
and Sri Aurobindo’s Trance of Waiting and Thought the
Paraclete. We love them, we cherish them, we tap them
from time to time to draw forth momentary solace, but —
do we understand them in every particular, do we gauge the
plenty in every crevice or sense the significance of every
turn of thought and every shade of colour ? Let us frankly
admit that we do not and that, perhaps, we camiot ; at any
rate, it is very consoling to be told by Coleridge that poetry
should only be generally, and not too perfectly, understood.
Even so, let us take courage in both hands and draw closer
to Thought the Paraclete ; and let us venture to scrutinize
it with reverent care.

II. — Form and Metre,

Thought the Paraclete is one of several fruitful attempts
on Sri Aurobindo’s part to give classical quantitative metres
agreeable English habitations and forms. In his long,

404

A NOii:, UN IHOUGHr IHE FAiiAULjli i Ji

scholarly and illuminating essay on Quantitative Metre,
Sri Auiobindo has generally indicated the broad lines along
which the oft-attempted and oft-frustrated endeavour may
indeed be carried to a successful conclusion ; and most of
his recent poems — quite apart from their thought- content or
spiritual impulsion — are offered as luminous exhibits that
amply illustrate and to a very considerable extent justify his
prosodical theories.

In Thought the Paraclete Sri Aurobindo attempts an
interesting variation of the Latin phaleuciackes or hende-
casyllabics of Catullus. The metrical scheme of the hende-
casyllabic line is given by this notation :

in other words, a spondee starts the line and is followed
first by a dactyl and then by three trochees. Sidney, Cole-
ridge, Tennyson and Swinburne are among the famous
English poets who have attempted, either half-heartedly or
in a mood of frivolity, to write English hendecasyllabics.
Sidney follows the orthodox scheme in lines like :

Reason, | tell me thy j Mynde, yf | here bee | Reason ?

In this I straunge vyo|lence to | make ie|sistence.

Where sweete | Graces ejrect the | stately | Banner ?

But Sidney is obviously ill at ease, — for instance, " reason ”
is a spondee at the beginning, but a trochee at the end !

Coleridge’s Catullan Plendecasyllabics, on the other hand,
refuse to scan in the orthodox (or, indeed, in any) fashion.
He generally manages to retain the three trochees at the end,
but the earlier half of the line is made up usually of two tri-
syllabic feet, though, once in a way, he does not scruple
to begin with a foot even of four syllables :

Shivering with | ecstasy | sank uplon her ( bosom.

SRI AUROBINDO

Tennyson is much more orthodox, but then his Hendeca-
syllabics are meant only to produce a comic effect, as in :

Hard, hard, j hard is it, j only [ not to ] tumble.

So fantastical is the dainty metre.

Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

Swinburne's Hendecasyllahics, on the other hand, follow
merely a trochaic rhythm, with an invariable dactylic sub-
stitution for the second foot ;

In the I month of the ( long de|cline of | roses
I, be|holcling the | summer | dead be|fore me ;

and the result is — and this is only too common in Swinburne
— a more or less “ ineffugable ” monotony.

Sri Aurobindo's hendecasyllabics are, however, hende-
casyliabics with a difference. He saw clearly that “ classical
metres cannot always with success be taken over just as they
are into the English rhythm ; often some modifications are
needed to make them more malleable.”^ He accordingly
begins as a rule with a trochee : the spondee and the dactyl
follow, and are themselves followed by two trochees ; and — ■
this is most significant — " the last syllable of the closing
trochee is most often dropped altogether.”^ The first
two lines of Thought the Paraclete, scanned according to
this scheme, will read as follows ;

As some | bright arch|angel in j vision [ flies
Plunged in | dream-caught i spirit im|mensilties

The modifications no doubt result in reducing the hende-
casyllabic to a decasyllabic line, — but there are also counter-

1, Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 305.

2. Ibid., II, p. 305.

406

A NOTE ON “ THOUGlll THe. PARAOLtUi

balancing advantages. The pushing of the dactyl towards
the centre gives the line an arching, almo.st a parabolic move-
ment, immediately suggesting the “ ascent ” implied in the
poem. The weight and volume of sound in the first three
feet naturally resolve themselves into a crescendo, a graded
ascending scale in tone and pitch. But “ ascent ” ever
involves " descent ” as well, and hence the latter half of
the line is so contrived by Sri Aurobindo that it shapes
itself into a diminuendo and thereby insinuates into our
ear this crucial principle underlying his metaphysics.

The elimination of the la.st syllable of the closing trochee
is also important from another point of view. Thought the
Paraclete is both a structure of thought and a stream of sound ;
the former consists of spans of thought (or sentences), while
the latter is made up of a large number of feet of sound. The
shortest of the spans of thought is concreted into the last line
of the poem ; so too the shortest of the feet of sound is com-
pressed into the clear and hard mould of the monosyllabic
fifth foot. And yet the last foot signifies no weakness, no
poverty of sound ; it is a single, but long, syllable ; even
exceptions like "being” and "seeing” are but apparently
so ; the final close of each line thus repeatedly strikes a note
of self-sufficiency and strength ; it is, as it were, “ throned in
the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision.”^

We have now only to write dojvn the notation,

read it from right to left and anon from left to right, and we
can at once perceive that the metre is truly symbolic of the
thought-content of the poem, that it visibly indicates the
principle of evolution-involution or ascent-descent that
is at the core of Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics of the Life

I. The Life Divine, I, p. 183.

407

SRI AUKOKINJJO

Divine. It is said that a single anustup vivifies in itself the
karma rasa that Valmiki Ramayana so wonderfully evokes
in its mighty sweeps and memorable incantations. We may
similarly hazard the statement that each of Sri Aurobindo’s
hendecasyllabics is also a phonetic galvanization of the idea
of the ascent of consciousness towards the Supermind and of
the descent of the Spirit that at last brings about this great
transformation :

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.

A word may be added about the rhyme-scheme of
Thought the Paraclete. The twenty-two lines are divided
into eleven pairs of rhymes, and the arrangement is as follows :

aa ; bededebe ; fgfg ; hiijjh ; kk ;

it is as though a rising movement intersects again and again a
falling movement, as if the two movements are involved in a
prolonged and purposeful embrace. The curious may group
the rhymes into four couplets and two quatrains, the remain-
ing rhymes floating in between somewhat elusively ; as a
matter of fact, excepting for the initial and concluding coup-
lets, the rest of the rhymes agreeably play a sort of hide-and-
seek, and the whole poem thus produces in the responsive ear
the impression rather of a " winding bout of linked sweetness,
long drawn out. ”

We have tried -to show here that the form and metre of
Thought the Paraclete merit and repay a careful study and
analysis. As one slowly reads the poem, — as one familiarizes
oneself with its half-exotic, but highly seductive and chasten-
ing, rhythms, — as one gazes enraptured at its rounded
completeness, one realizes at length that Sri Aurobindo has
somehow nobly succeeded in giving the heirdecasyllabic an
English soul and setting. He has succeeded, it would seem,
where a Sidney, a Coleridge and a Swinburne had failed ; and
he has succeeded only because he has all along known, not

408

A NOiJC, ON "thought THE PARACLETE’’

only the possibilities, but also the peculiar limitations of an
attempt to reproduce classical metres in English.

III. — The Title of the Poem.

So much about the form and the metre : we shall now turn
to the title of the poem — " Thought the Paraclete ” ! We
know — do we really, or do we only think we know ? — what
" thought " is ; we fondly believe sometimes that a certain
thought is illuminating, that it germinated in the obscure
depths of our consciousness on a particular occasion, even
that it is " developing, ’’ sprouting forth in many directions.
But why does Sri Aurobindo call Thought the Paraclete ?
What exactly is a Paraclete ? And why is Thought the
Paraclete ?

The word " Paraclete ’’ occurs in the New Testament,^
where Christ refers to the Holy Ghost as the Paraclete
Mr. C. H. Irwin explains the term thus :

" It includes the idea of Comforter and . . . .Advocate.
Each of these words must be taken in its fullest sense, so as
to include instruction, guidance, strength, and holy
elevation of desire and purpose. The word clearly
implies the personality of the Holy Spirit.

The Jesuit mystic and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, attempts
in one of his sermons a more vivid explanation of the term :

“ A Paraclete is one who comforts, who cheers, who
encourages, who persuades, who exhorts, who stirs up,
who urges forward, who calls on ; what the spur and word
of command is to a horse, what clapping of hands is to a
speaker, what a trumpet is to the soldier, that a Paraclete
is to the soul ; one who calls us on, that is what it means, a

1. John, XIV, i6. 26: XV, 26: XVI, 7.

2. The Univ&sal Bible Commentary, p. 433.

409

SRI AUROBINDO

Paraclete is one who calls us on to do good. One sight is
before my mind, it is homely but it comes home : you have
■seen at cricket how, when one of the batsmen at the wicket
has made a hit and wants to score a nm, the other doubts,
hangs back, or is ready to run in again, how eagerly the
first will cry — Come, on, come on ! — a Paraclete is just that
something that cheers the spirit of man, with signals and
with cries, all zealous that he should do something and full
of assurance that if he will he can, calling him on, springing
to meet him half way, crying to his ears or to his heart ;
This way to do God’s will, this way to save your soul, come
on, come on.

And Hopkins has also tried to show that, although Christ is
certainly a Paraclete, only the Holy Ghost is the Paraclete.

However, the term “ Paraclete ” seems to have occasionally
been used in other illuminating contexts also. Thus the
Oxford English Dictionary gives two extracts, one of which
refers to the “ victorious hero ” as the " true Paraclete, ”
while the other credits Plato with u.sing " in one place the
term Paraclete, Intercessor, in speaking of the Reason. "
If Reason can be called the Paraclete, why, so too, can Thought
be, — Thought that ever strives to reach up to the meanings
of things, ever bravely scales the spiral of Consciousness,
ever attempts to achieve a total and intimate compenetration
with ultimate Reality !

Thought, then, is a Paraclete, even the Paraclete. As Sri
Aurobindo points out, Thought “ is not the giver of knowledge
but the ‘ mediator ' between the Inconscient and the Super-
conscient. It compels the world born from the Inconscient
to reach for knowledge other than the instinctively vital or
merely empirical ; it calls for that Superconscient knowledge
and prepares the consciousness here to receive it. It raise.s

1, The Note-Books and Papers of Gerard Manky Hopkins, p. 387.

410

A NOTE ON “thought THE PARACLETE”

itself into the higher realms, and even in disappearing into the
supramental and Anaiida levels is transformed into something
that will bring down their powers into the silent Self which
its cessation leaves behind it.*’^ It is this conception of
Thought that is embodied in the term “ the Paraclete ” and
the poem itself may be aptly described as a radiant evocation
of the successive stages by which the Paraclete, the celestial
automobile, registers its progress and brings the clinging
occupant to the long-sought sanctuary of Bliss.

Thought, then, is our mediator, our intercessor ; we
summon it to our aid whenever we tread upon the multitu-
dinous thorns of life ; we repose no mean trust in Thought,
for we know it can “ gently lead us on it willingly takes
our half-articulate messages to the world of the Supercon-
science and it also brings to us " airs from heaven " to comfort
us, or to sting us to further spurts of ascent — onward and
onward — to the very gate of the enthroned seat of the Super-
mind, and even beyond to the ineffable Bliss of Brahman.
Dare man gaze at the Sun and his supernal splendours and
remain unblinded yet ? Dare man leap across the shoreless
chasm that divides the worlds of Inconscience and Supercon-
science, the mental world of division and pain and multiplicity
and the other-world of harmony and Ananda and integral
unity ?

But — astonishing as it may appear — Man dares all and
often stakes all because Thought the Paraclete is his guide
and his intercessor, Thought is the angel the breath of whose
nostrils softens even the heat of the journey, the strength of
whose wings — “ great glimmering wings of wind ” — bridges
the distance between the here and the there, indeed even
brings the here and the there together and tansforms them
into an infinite here and an eternal now.

I. In the course of a letter to a disciple.

SRI AUROEINDO

However, the stages on the “ journey ” are to be visualized,
not on a space-time basis in terms of a left-to-right or a
bottom-to-top progression from one junction or aerodrome
of achievement to another and a further and a better, but
rather psychologically as movements in consciousness, as
successive attempts at a dynamic comprehension of the One
in the Many and the Many in the One, as progressive attempts
to reduce more and more, and finally to eliminate altogether,
the " immense hiatus as seems to exist between Supramental
Truth-Consciousness and the Mind in the Ignorance.”^ Man
may be in appearance a thing of nought, a muling and a
puking creature that is the jest of Nature, subject alas I to
the giant evils of death, desire and incapacity ; but man
refuses to grovel in the groove of his limitations, refuses to
gloat over these badges of his misery, but is resolved rather
to exceed himself, to possess the Infinite and also to be
possessed by the Infinite. He alone holds in the clasp of his
hands the clue to the future, his own and the world's !

But the possession of the Infinite is no easy business, " not
a happy canter to the goal indeed, “ the possession of the
Infinite cannot come except by an ascent to those supramental
planes, nor the knowledge of it except by air inert submission
of Mind to the descending messages of the Truth-Conscious
Reality."® Thought the Paraclete — Thought, our winged
intercessor, our comrade, our friend, and the resourceful
mediator in our dire distress, — ^Thought the Paraclete can
alone facilitate our ascent " to those supramental planes,” it
alone can prepare us to receive those " descending messages
Thought the Paraclete is thus verily a Power and a Personality,
and we have but to allow ourselves to be carried by him — in
the marjara fashion — in utter self-surrender and faith, — and
all will be well.

1. The Life Divine, 1 , p. 416.

2. Letter to Dilip.

3. The Life Divine, I, p. 248.

412

A NOTE ON “thought THE PARACLETE ”

IV. — The Philosophical Background,

Sri Aurobindo wrote several years ago to one of his disciples
that Thought the Paraclete " does not express any philoso-
phical thought .... it is simply a perception of a certain
movement, that’s all. ” A poem like Thought the Paraclete
i s no doubt no mere footnote to a philosophical treatise of the
dimensions of The Life Divine ; a poem exists, splendorously
and triumphantly, in its own sovereign right, — or it is nothing-
And Thought the Paraclete is truly poetry first and poetry all
the time, poetry that just storms the toppling crags of Reality
by direct frontal assault, or, to borrow Sir Arthur Quiller-
Couch’s metaphor, leaps “ from a centre within us to a point
of the circumference, and seizes it by direct vision. ’’ The
reader, too, has boldly to leap likewise from a centre within
him and seize the meaning of Thought the Paraclete ; for such
poetry has to be apprehended, not with the aid of an elaborate
critical exegesis, but by direct vision alone.

While thus the true hearer, like the true creator, of poetry
is the soul, the soul only the soul alone, we cannot as yet
abolish or wholly ignore the operations of middle terms and
muddling instruments like the intellect, the senses, and the
imagination. The ear it cannot choose but hear the pro-
cession of beautiful sounds, the intellect it cannot choose
but depiece the integral framework of the poem, and the
imagination it cannot choose but visualize similar experiences
in accordance with the laws of its own unique svabhava and
svadharma. These too have their own place — though a
strictly subordinate place— in the phenomenon of poetic
creation and appreciation. We need not therefore offer a
lengthy apology for occasionally yielding, as we do here, to the
temptation of talking about and about a poem, instead of
leaving it to sink of its own accord deep into one’s veiled,
stainless, limitless Self. Thought the Paraclete is certainly
quintessential poetry : but the intellect would see in it the

413

SEI AUKOBINJQO

base, nay the justification, of a whole system of philosophy.
Even so the poem but expresses with a radiant finality the
inapprehensible Truth that ever disconcertingly evades the
mere logician’s grasp. The poem gives us, not the philosophi-
cal justification for the soul’s ascent to the Godhead on the
wings of Thought, but rather brings out in one dazzling wave
of rhythmic sound the beauty and the glory and the ecstasy
of the fact of ascent and triumph and splendid transformation.
Elowever, even the votarist of pure poetry will not scorn an
intimacy with the philosophical background of the poem, for
not only is it illuminating in itself but it also makes easier the
necessary final self-surrender to the poem.

The philosophical spiral of reasoning that underlies
Thought the Paraclete may be summarized in a few sentences.
We may start with the axiom that the evolutionary transition
from Mind in the Ignorance to Mind in the Knowledge (or
conversely, the involutionary transition from Mind in the
Knowledge to Mind in the Ignorance) is itself marked by
various steps or resting-places or " slow gradations " on the
way, After all, it is a fairly “ indeterminate ” or " inter-
mediate ” zone that we are here considering ; the dynamics
of the sheer physical universe cannot and do not obtain here ;
only a few reassuring lamp-posts or light-houses glisten in the
dim expanse beyond, and we are left to trace out the graph
of our fascinating journey with the sole help of these luminous
milestones on the way.

Sri Aurobindo mentions four of these discernible " slow
gradations ” — ^Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, and
Overmind. Mind starts this particular evolutionary race,
Supermind consummates it ; and it is Thought the Paraclete
that makes the consummation easy, natural, and even in-
■evitable.

Further, according to Sri Aurobindo, ultimate Reality
includes the two extreme ends of the evolutionary sweep,
Matter and Spirit, — not only includes them, and all that lies

414

A NOTE ON “thought THE PARACLETE’’

between them, but at the same time also transcends them,
being always Itself, the One without a Second, the Absolute
beyond all termini, the Truth beyond all truths ; " we start,
then, with the conception of an omnipresent Reality of which
neither the Non-Being at one end nor the Universe at the
other are negations that annul ; they are rather different
states of Reality, obverse and reverse affirmations. ” The
movement of Involution, starting as a deliberate descent of
Consciousness from Sachchidananda, has reached its bottom,
its very bottom, in Matter ; the counter-movement of Evolu-
tion, starting in its turn as an upsurge of Consciousness from
Matter, where it is heavily and darkly veiled, has reached the
sloping and slippery stage of Mind. One more forward
leap is necessary and inevitable, — ^the leap from Mind to
Supermind, touching the four sign-posts of Higher Mind,
Illumined Mind, Intuition, and Overmind on the way, —
and then only would Man be able to fulfil the evolutionary
purpose, to exceed himself by outgrowing the limitations of
death, desire and incapacity, and partake once and for all in
an earthly immortality.

V. — The Four Movements.

At long last we can now tackle the poem itself. The
central idea of the poem, which is the transformation in the
Self brought about as a result of the ascent of Consciousness
to the supra mental level, is suggested by the imagery and the
music, rather than closely argued out in terms of logical
reason, We are expected to proceed from light to light,
from one luminous revelation to another, and anon to the
next, and so on, till we arrive at and are lost in the rich and
illimitable calm of the wonderful finale. To facilitate an

I. The Life Divine, I, p, 49-

SRI AUROBINDO

analysis of the poem, however, let us divide (alas, we ever
“ murder to dissect ”1) it into four separate movements or
discernible sweeps of thought.

First Movement

The opening five lines, constituting the first movement, at
once achieve an arresting exordium, and at the same time
also suggest through a bold and apt simile the perceived
ascent of Thought. “ As some bright archangel in vision
flies. the words cannot but suggest to the reader the
Holy Ghost, the Paraclete according to Christ ; as the Holy
Ghost, or the archangel Gabriel or some other bright archangel,
plunges headlong into " dream-caught spirit immensities ”
to meet and redeem the pilgrimaging soul, so “ flew my
thought ’’ ; Man the mental and vital being has been stung
to activity by the " pure touch of the spiritual forces ; he
has now outgrown sheer instinctive reaction to circumstances
and he is no more dazzled by the brilliant systems and
delectable castles constructed by empirical knowledge and
the mere intelligence ; he is now a wanderer in the realms of
the invisible, he is indeed, for the time being, groping about
himself being " self-lost in the vasts of God. ” The reference
to " green " and " orange ’’ need not puzzle us, the contrast
implied being quite natural, both materially and metaphori-
cally. Andrew Marvell too juxtaposes the two colours to
suggest a telling contrast :

" orange bright
Like golden laihps in a greet; night.

The transition from a purely vital consciousness to a mental
one is as noticeable as the shift from " green ” to " orange ” ;

I. The Life Divine, II, p. 976.
a. Bermudas.

416

A NOTE ON “thought THE PARACLETE ’’

but Thought rises higher still in the scale, seeking other
colours in the spectrum of its steep ascent.

Second Aiovement

The next ten lines constitute the second movement :

Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind
Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod
Space and Time’s mute vanishing ends. The face
Lustred, pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff,

Eremite, sole, daring the bourneless ways.

Over world-bare summits of timeless being
Gleamed ; the deep twilights of the world-abyss
Failed below. Sun-realms of supernal seeing.
Crimson-white mooned oceans of pauseless bliss
Drew its vague heart-yearning with voices sweet.

Thought has managed to grope its way to the stair of ascension
and has reached the rung of the Higher Mind, " a mind no
longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a
larger clarity of Spirit .... a luminous thought-mind,
a mind of spirit-born conceptual knowledge. Seeing the
One behind the Many, the Higher Mind strives, at any rate
conceptually, to get beyond the categories of space and time ;
and now its prime thirst is to achieve “ a mass ideation, a
system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view. The
term “ wings of wind ’’ suggests the living instrument of
spiritual Consciousness ; " gold-red " is, according to Sri
Aurobiiido, “ the colour of the supramental in the physical, ’’

1. The Life Divine, II, pp. 985-6.

2, Ibid., 11 , p. 987.

417

SKI AUKOBINUO

or, as he sings in Flame-Wind :

Gold in the mind and the life-flame’s red
Make of the heavens a splendour, the earth a blaze . . , . ^

But conceptual knowledge, however comprehensive, is
not enough ; it lacks warmth and motion and even spiritual
sustenance, Thought therefore cannot rest for ever on the
rung of the Higher Mind but must forge further ahead ; as it
reaches the level of the Illumined Mind, unity is seen, not
alone as a concept, but even as a living reality ; but it is only
an intermittent vision that Thought glimpses at this stage.
Even then the experience gives a lustre to the face of the
mystic seer, so that in him “ the soul lives in vision and in a
direct sense and experience. By now Thought the Para-
clete has brought the thinker and the seer to the threshold
of Intuition ; Thought is the winged hippogriff,® " pale-blue-
lined ” ^ he is the all-seeing, all-daring hermit, truly the
Pilgrim of Eternity ; he is veritably the sole monarch of his
visioned realms. As it touches the intuitive level, Thought
acquires the four-fold potencies of truth-seeing, truth-
hearing, truth-seizing and truth-correlation® and " it brings
its own greater radiant movement into the will, into the feelings
and emotions, the life impulses, the action of sense and
sensation, the very workings of the body consciousness ....
A certain integrality can thus take place. Meanwhile
there is an obscuration or ignoration of the seeming dichoto-

1. Collected Poems and Plavs, II, p. 364.

2. The Life Divine, II, p. 996.

3. The liippogtiff is a " fabulous griftin-like creature with body of
horse” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary). Milton refers to the "wing’'
of the hippogriff ; and hence Thought may be compared to the hippogrifif
since both are “ winged.”

4. According to Sri Aurobindo, " pale-blue " is the colour of the higher
ranges of mind up to Intuition." (Letter to a disciple).

5. The Life Divine, II, p. 1000.

6. The Life Divine, II, p. 1001.

418

A NUit ON I’HOUGnr IHt PARAOLjii

mies and disharmonies of the world :

the deep twilights of the world-abyss
Failed below.

The harmony from above would seem to have calmed the
troubled waters below, so that it is clear that the descent of the
higher Consciousness has taken place concurrently with the
ascent of the lower one.

The next movement in the ascent reaches up to the
Overmind, and now Thought “ for the most part no longer
seems to originate individually in the body or the person but
manifests from above or a^mes in upon the cosmic mind-
waves : all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is
now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or compre-
hended, but the source of the revelation is not in one’s
separate self but in the universal knowledge ; the feelings,
emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same
cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross
body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the
universality ; for the body is only a small support or even
less, a point of relation, for the action of a vast cosmic in-
strumentation. Thought has reached " sun-realms of

supernal seeing ; it is now a powerful organizer who
conceives and executes many " crimson- white ® mooned
oceans of pauseless bliss " and it is a " magician craftsman
empowered to weave the multi-coloured warp and woof of
manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe.

And yet Thought at the overmental level is mightily
restless and knows not the peace of utter fulfilment and

1. The Life Divine, II, pp. 1002-3.

2. Cf. ‘‘ Wisdom supernal looks down on me, knowledge mind cannot

measure ;

Light that no vision can render garments the silence with

splendour."

(Collected Poems and Plays, 11 , p. 363),

3. " Crimson-while " is the reflection of the Supraraental Light.

4. The Life Divine, 1 , p. 431.

419

V7

SRI AUROBIMOO

self-knowledge ; its “ vague ” — " vague ” because it is still
not in possession of the finality and self-luminosity of supra-
mcntal knowledge — its “ vague heart-yearning ” no doubt
sings songs of a multitudinous variety and also translates them
into reality, but even such Thought is only “ a power of the
lower hemisphere : although its basis is a cosmic unity, its
action is an action of division and interaction, an action taking
its stand on multiplicity. Overmind cannot obviously be
the final resting place of the questing soul of Man.

Third Movemenl

The third movement describes the final leap, the trium-
phant landing on the summit of the Supermind. Although
the overmental Consciousness " is the highest possible
status-dynamis of the spirit in the spiritual-mental plane,
Thought refuses to rest on its oars, but

Hungering, large-souled to surprise the unconned
Secrets white-fire- veiled of the last Beyond,

Crossing power-swept silences rapture-stunned.
Climbing high far ethers eternal-sunned,

Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete
Disappeared slow-singing a flame-word rune.

Or, as Sri Aurobindo writes elsewhere : “ The soul would

.... cross its original line of departure from the supreme
Knowledge : it would enter into a description of the integrality
of the supramental gnosis. ”® This final “ canter to the
goal ” is truly beyond the resources of logical reasoning or
verbal portraiture. Thought the Paraclete would seem to

1. The Life Divine, II, p. ioo6,

2 . Ibid,, II, p. 1006.

3. Ibid., II, p. 1009.

420

A NO'lJC. ON

i HOUGH r IHJi PARACLi^li:.

have learned the last secret of all, the “ flame-word rune,
and " slow-singing ” this mantra of total emancipation and
transfiguration, it disappears into the “ last Beyond. The
concluding lines of The Bird of Fire offer a striking parallel to
the third movement in Thought the Paraclete :

One strange leap of thy mystic stress breaking the barriers
of mind and life, arrives at its luminous term thy

flight ;

Invading the secret clasp of the Silence and crimson Fire
thou frontest eyes in a timeless Face.®

Fourth Movement

The last line, in and by itself, is the fourth and concluding
movement of thought and spray of revelation :

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.

The ascent has summoned the corresponding de.scent ; the
ego is dead, the self is bare of all the sheaths of the Ignorance,
it is for ever immune from death, desire, and incapacity, it is
the ONE in very truth, it is the heir to Infinity, Eternity and
Immortality,

VI. — Conclusion.

The four movements in Thought the Paraclete are but
integral parts of a logical and poetical whole. The choice of
words and images, the patterning of metre and rhyme, the

1. According to Sri Aurobindo, the " flame-word rune" is "the
Word of the Higher Inspiration, Intuition, Revelation, which is the highest
attainment of Thought.” (Letter to a disciple).

2. Cf. Emily Bronte ; " its home, its harbour found.

Measuring tire gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.”

3. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 280.

421

SRI AUROBINIJO

associations of colour and sound, the carelul organization of
the four movements, the adequacy and beauty of the structural
design, all make Thought the Paraclete a profound revelation
ani-i d perfect poem. After a minute study of Thought the
Paraclete, one is inclined to exclaim with Appayya Dikshita :

2c'4

sprsqij ii ^

1. Ci)mmeatai}' on Sri Venkatanatha'.s Yadavabhyudaya, Canto I,
Veree 9.

422

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works or Sri Aurobindo ;

The Brain of India (1923)
Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda (1940)

Views and Reviews (1941)

Heraclitus (1941)

The Ideal of the Karmavogin (1921)
Bases of Yoga (1941)

Lights on Yoga (1942)

The Yoga and Its Objects (1931)

Isha Upanishad (1924)

The Mother (1937)

Evolution (1923)

The Riddle of this Woild (1933)

Ideal and Progress (1922)

Thoughts and Glimpses (1932)

Essays on the Gita (1928)

The Life Divine (1941)

Collected Poems and Plays (1942)

The Superman (1922)

A System of National Education (1924)
The Renaissance in India
The National Value of Art (1936)
Speeches (1922)

Kalidasa (1929)

Kara-kahini (Bengali) (1931)

Journals :

Arya (1914-1921)

Bandemataram (1907-1908)

423

SRI AllKOUlNDO

The Karmayogin (190Q-1910)

Sri Aurobindo Palhamanclir AnnuaLs, 1042 , 19-43. 1944.
The Advent (Quarterly Journal)

Selections from the Bandemataram (1922)

Life-Work of Sri Aurobindo, by Jyotish Ch. Ghose (Calcutta)
The Teaching and the Asram of Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo : a Life-Sketch (1937)

Sri Aurobindo and the New Age. by Anilbaran Roy (1940)
Eastern Lights, by Mahendranath Sircar (1935)

An Introduction to the Philo.sophy of Sri Aurobindo, by
S. K. Maitra (1941)

Sri Aurobindo and tlie future of Mankind, by Adhar
Chandra Das (1934)

Sri Aurobindo’s " The Life Divine, " by V. Cbandrasekharam

(1941)

The Coming Race, by Nolini Kanta Gupta (1923)

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part I, by Nolini Kanta Gupta

(1939)

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part II, by Nolini Kanta Gupta

(1943)

The Malady of the Century, by Nolini Kanta Gupta (1943)
The World War and its Inner Bearings, by Nolini Kanta
Gupta (1942)

Towards the Light, by Nolini Kanta Gupta (1938)

Towards Transcendence (1933)

Visions and Voices, by Amrita (1929)

Songs from the Soul, by Anilbaran Roy (1939)

Sri Aurobindo : A Homage, by Tan Yun-Shan and Sisir
Kumar Mitra (1940)

Future of India, by Sisir Kumar Mitra (1941)

Technical Terms in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy, by Ambalal
Purani (1942)

Sanskrit Citations in The Life Divine (1943)

Poems, by Arjava (J. A. Chadwick) (1941)

Lotus Petals, by Punjalal (1943)

424

lUNi ir/iL LlBiirtif

NAINI TAL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Secret Splendour, by K. D Sethna (1941 )

To the Heights, by Nolini Kanta Gupta (1944)

Sri Aurobindo — the Divine Master, by Shuddhananda
Bharati {1943)

Life and Times of G. R. Das, by P. C. Ray (1927)

Indian National Evolution, by A. C. Mazumdar (1915)

Anami (Bengali), by Dilip Kumar Roy
Suryamukhi (Bengali), by Dilip Kumar Roy
Tirthankar (Bengali), by Dilip Kumar Roy
Aurobindo Prasange (Bengali), by Dilip Kumar Roy
Aiirobinda Prakasam (Tamil), by Shuddhananda Bharati
Sri Aurobindo and His Yoga (Tamil), by P. Kodanda Raman
Article on " Sri Aurobindo : the Splendour of His Poetic
Genius, ’’ by K. D, Sethna in the All-India Weekly Literary
Annual, 1945.

Works of the Mother :

Prieres ct Meditations de la Mere
Words of the Mother
Prayers and Meditations of the Mother
The Supreme Discovery
^Conversations with the Mother

* Originally published for private circulation only, it is now included
in the " Words of the Mother."